Shaanxi region is the birthplace of Chinese zither, in the nine schools of zither, Shaanxi zither is called "the voice of the true Qin", and the red bird as a representative of the Qin zither, can be said to be as famous as Dunhuang, in the industry has "South Dunhuang, North Vermilion Bird" said. Founded in 1958 by the Xi'an Conservatory of Music Musical Instrument Factory, the Suzaku Guzheng was originally designed for the professional teaching services of the Xi'an Conservatory of Music.
Suzaku Guzheng and Hongsheng are similar in the production process, and also adopt the whole excavation process of "Tong Tong as the body, no mullions in the middle", except for the 5 series in the internal increase of support beams, the rest of the series are hollow inside. For example, the Vermilion Bird Guzheng will engrave a striped sound groove inside the soundboard to make the sound more uniform and soft, and it adopts the standard S21-163 shape, without the small head design of Hongsheng and the small guzheng design with smaller specifications.
Suzaku has its own paulownia planting base, the panels are made of high-quality paulownia wood, different from the modern baking panel technology, Suzaku retains the natural air-drying method to reduce the moisture content of the panel, and the wood needs to be naturally air-dried for more than 3-5 years in a specific temperature and humidity environment before production. Due to the long production cycle, in order to ensure the output, Suzaku uses thousands of square meters of timber storage to ensure sufficient timber reserves.
Before the 80s of the 20th century, the guzheng panel was generally not baked, but naturally loosened after about 3 years of weathering. The natural air-drying of the panels is characterized by uniform drying, fast sound transmission speed, and also retains the original grain of the wood. The surge in guzheng production made natural air drying unable to meet the requirements of rapid production, so it developed into a panel that was soaked and then manually baked and dried. The baked panels are generally dark brown in color, which is integrated with the guzheng finishing material and is more beautiful. Natural air-drying and baking process are different soundboard treatment processes, different treatment methods will have different effects, but it represents the style of zither making in different regions, and the treatment method of the soundboard cannot be used to determine the quality of the zither.
Different from the "Southern School" Guzheng represented by Dunhuang, the "Northern School" Vermilion Bird Guzheng has a relaxed pronunciation, pure timbre and heavy timbre, especially the bass is rich and the rhyme is long, and the treble area is slightly less penetrating than Dunhuang. Dunhuang Guzheng has good explosiveness and good ability to control the fast-paced repertoire with high difficulty. The Vermilion Bird Guzheng has been dug to form a resonance box, which has a better resonance effect and is very suitable for playing slow-paced traditional repertoire, both of which can be said to have their own strengths. When consumers choose Guzheng, they can combine the timbre characteristics of different brands with their own conditions, if the repertoire they play has a fixed preference, it is recommended to choose the corresponding brand, otherwise it will not be able to present the best effect, such as playing the song of the fast wheel finger with the Vermilion Bird, and the explosive power is not as good as Dunhuang.
The models of the Suzaku Guzheng are divided by series, covering a total of 7 series from 5-11 series, the larger the series number, the higher the applicable grade, the longer the production cycle, and the higher the price. 5 series as a popular zither or intermediate performance zither, the production cycle is about 5 years, the price varies slightly due to different panel grades, the lowest price is 4680 yuan for the 05 type, and the higher panel grade is 6960 yuan. The production cycle of the 6-8 series of high-level playing zhengs is about 8 years, and the price is similar to that of the 698 series in Dunhuang, basically around 10,000 yuan. The production cycle of the 9-11 series is the same as that of the corresponding series, the price of the 9 series is about 20,000 yuan, and the price of the 10 series and 11 series is more than 50,000 yuan.
In terms of appearance, the main body of the Suzaku Guzheng is only decorated with a small amount of precious wood such as mahogany and nanmu, and the appearance of the Guzheng is decorated with piano lacquer, the lacquer surface is uniform and full, and the pattern is mostly the iconic chariot and horse pattern of the Suzaku Bird, which is simple and elegant as a whole. Compared with the baked dark brown panel, the white panel color is easy to cause visual fatigue, especially when the light is irradiated, it is easy to pluck the wrong strings, which is a disadvantage of its relative baking panel.
The Suzaku zither is made by the whole digging process, and the panel is naturally air-dried, so the production cycle is longer than that of the general folding zither, so the output is lower. When buying offline, pay attention to whether it is an officially authorized dealer of Suzaku to avoid scams.
