#kamanche #saz #sakht_saz #ساخت_ساز #کمانچه #ساز
My Story:
My name is Alireza Nikzat, born on June 22, 1982. My father is retired and very skilled at repairing household items. I grew up in his workshop, surrounded by wrenches and tools, which made me technically more capable than my classmates. I always did a great job on school practical assignments, but ironically, I never got top grades 😅 — the teachers thought adults had helped me!

As a teenager, I started crafting wooden objects — decorative ships, sculptures, and musical instruments using simple tools. Later in my youth, I began making small decorative instruments and developed a passion for learning music. I decided to build a full-sized instrument. Using a single piece of wood, I made my first instrument, a tar, which turned out quite poorly. A few months later, I built a second one — a setar — which was also not great, but at least usable for practice.

For several years, I continued working with music this way. Because I was making instruments, I also started repairing musical instruments for friends and acquaintances — fixing cracks, replacing frets on the setar, changing strings, and more.

In 2009, I made a serious decision to focus on instrument making. Over the next few years, I built around 39 setars, but none of them had good sound quality. I became disheartened and decided to stop making setars altogether. Instead, I bought a kamancheh and began learning to play it. The quality of my kamancheh wasn’t great, so I decided to make a new bowl and attach it to my instrument to improve the sound. Surprisingly, the very first bowl I made didn’t sound bad at all. My teacher even commented on how much better the instrument sounded — and that was the first spark that motivated me to start making kamanchehs.

I still have that kamancheh. Even though its bowl is crooked and not very symmetrical, it’s one of my most beloved instruments, full of memories. From that moment on, I began researching and improving with each new instrument I made. I would take my instruments to various teachers, gradually improving their quality.

To this day, I’ve built around 290 kamanchehs and now work professionally — and I’m still researching and learning.