BULGARIAN GADULKA / rebec of special make "Happy day"

This is a professional gadulka instrument handmade by the best Bulgarian string instruments master. The gadulka is of perfect make and is intended for professional musicians. The instrument is UNIQUE, entirely handcrafted. It is of a skillful craftsmanship resulting from master's hard work, creativity and rich professional experience. The wood material used is 15 years old, dried and processed via special traditional technology. The maker of the gadulka we offer you is known for his talent on a national and Balkan region level. He is a third-generation master: both his father and grand father were into the string instruments making.
The instrument's quality is guaranteed with a certificate issued by Shop Bulgaria ltd. and the master himself.

This gadilka also belongs to the special-instrument series. The instrument of lighter color and yellow-flower pattern was started in late spring 2007 and finished on the day when the Bulgarian nurses came back to Bulgaria after a 9-year suffering in Libya, i.e. on 24 July, Tuesday.

That is why this gadulka was called “Happy Day”. To the dark-colored, varnished body made of mulberry is glued an upper part made of high-quality spruce manually hollowed out in an old traditional way. The light-colored front and beautiful decorations of a sun flower symbolize the joy from returning to the Mother land and the end of suffering. Also, this gadulka can be associated with a hot, summer day. The association with the high temperatures of summer and depth of joyful mood are completed by the dark red ground coat used for the inside of the gadulka. The ground coat was like the one used by the great Italian masters of previous times.

“Happy Day” is characterized by the classical proportions of the gadulka instrument. What makes it special is the lighter and flatter corpus as well as the soft and lyrical tone reminding of hardly suppressed joy at a long-awaited meeting.

The gadulka we offer have the following characteristics: It has 3 main strings and 11 sympathetic ones.

It consists of:

- neck and top part of the neck of the instrument is made of Acacia-tree
- corpus consisting of thick resonant top plate, made of mulberry tree and back, base part of melburry tree as well (the block of wood hollowed out, not made of separate parts that have been glued together (skafto)) Everything is handmade via old traditional master technology.
- at the bottom is the black, horn-made plate to which the strings are attached
- 11 resonant metal strings ("podglasnici"). They are placed further down and the bow does not touch them . They only produce sound when affected by the sound vibration of the three main strings placed over them.
- 3 main metal strings where the bow glides on. They are pitched in A-E-A (la-mi-la) - this is typical of Bulgarian Trakia Gadulka. The strings are lifted over the resonant plate by the bridge, called "donkey".
- a bow with sheaf of fibers
- wooden key for easily pitching the different strings

- a certificate, stamped by the National Association of the Craftsmen.

The instrument measures are:
Length 65 cm / 25,6"
Width 20 cm / 7,9"
Mensure (the distance from the last three keys on the neck top to the bridge) - 36 cm / 14,2 "

PLAY a GADULKA sample (29 sec.)