Bandura

Bandura (kobza-bandura), Ukrainian hybrid lute/psaltery with 44 strings. Eight bass strings on a short neck and 36 strings laid fanwise across the front. Compass ?E1 to c3, diatonic, with ten additional strings to give chromatic notes from f# to d#2. Strings are steel, seventeen of them wound. Thick four-piece front with soundhole. A slanting combined bridge and tailpiece of plated steel bears on the front. Eight wound bass strings attached to frontal iron wrestpins at peghead, the others to pins set in a protruding pinblock around the treble side; pinblock fastened to rim of back underneath front. Bass strings share a curved nut; other strings have individual ?ivory nut pillars with the top end wedge-shaped, and notched for string.