Qualities to look out for when buying a Guzheng
1. Sound board. The sound board of a guzheng should be made of paulownia that has been air dried for at least a year. Air-dried or oven-dried sound boards retain the natural color of wood, usually in light golden color or brown color. Do not select any guzheng that has dark sound board looks like a piece of charcoal. The dark sound boards are flame dried using a fire gun directly flame on surface. Although flame drying speed up the drying process from 1 year to 1 day, but it also fatally destroys the wood piece. We've seen charcoal boards crack or change shape in a short period of time. Furthermore, the "wood sound" of a wood instrument is gone. A guzheng should sound rich with warm wood tone, but the flame-dried board guzhengs only sound metallic.Ideally, a quartersawn-cut sound board will be most stable for an instrument. However, paulownia wood generally is not big enough to make a quarter-sawn cut for 21-stringed guzheng. Therefore, the maker uses the most central part of a flatsawn piece instead. According to Guzheng Father Master Xu Zhen-Gao: "the central part (of a flatsawn) is considered the most stable piece". The best piece of guzheng sound board should have straight and even wood grains, with tighter grains in the high range and looser grains in the low range. To achieve this perfect sounding board, some makers also use combined-quartersawn piece to obtain an even wood grains. Please contact us for a custom-made quartersawn guzheng.2. Bottom board. The bottom board is as important as the sound board. A good quality bottom board should use a single piece of paulownia. However, to lower the cost, the makers use plywood instead of real paulownia. So, if the guzheng is painted dark at the bottom, you know that's probably using plywood instead of using real paulownia. The sound quality of a plywood one is not as clear when comparing to a paulownia one, but the price is only one-third as much.
3. Frames. The frame of a guzheng is made of hard wood such as zitan sandalwood, nanmu, rosewood or ebony. The effects of a good frame doesn't really add a lot to the sound quality of guzheng, but it adds a difference to the tone. Zitan purple sandalwood is considered to have clear and pure tone, old rosewood is considered to have thick and sweet tone, while nanmu is considered to have deep tone. However since a guzheng with an expensive frame usually means higher price in the market, the makers spend more efforts in selecting a good paulownia piece and better bridges and strings for it. The main board of a guzheng with high priced frame generally is better in quality and is hand cut by experienced craftsman, while others are just cut by machine or junior craftsman.
posted by Jael™ @ 2:24 AM
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