Kirill Berezovsky's acoustic balalaika modification

This balalajka was restored and built into an electric by Kirill, in Russia during 2011.

This is a restoration of an acoustic balalajka, a normal "tourist" model to be more precise. The balalaika had cracks on the soundboard and on the rib cage and was not in the best of condition. You can find pictures of this further down this page. Now it has been remade, it is i good condition, electric and got a humbucker and it looks brilliant!

First of he began by closing the cracks on the rib cage; this was done with epozy-glue and tape and the force of gravity. The soundboard was replaced with eight pieces of mahogany, that have been pasted together and polished, afterwards holes for the electronics and the resonator have been added.

The pickup was also made by Kira, it is made from two guitar single-coil pickups, and it have got new wire. The resistant is about 3000 Ohm. He is thinking of also adding an on-board amplifier, this due to the fact that it gives of a very low power signal. All the metallic parts have been grounded, even the strings - his solution to do this is quite genius, if you study picture 24 you will see that there is copper foil on the string pegs.

Sound samples:

Demo 1 - Clean

Demo 2 - Distortion

Here are some YouTube clips with the instrument:

Here are some pictures from the build/modification itselff:

You can find more information on his homepage.