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Often it is the jawari (curvature) of the taraf bridge -- or depending on the make of your taraf bridge. even more important is the fix of the legs of both main bridge to the tabli and the taraf bridge to tabli. Also, tarafs need not be loud and blooming after the stroke like some of his are (it is irregular). You'd actually rather they all subtly bloom equally. What type of sitar style you play? RS (no pancham - stag horn bridge)? Ust Vilayat Khan -- often ebony wood bridge (sometimes hard sythetics). Some cheaper sitars in the Nikil Banerjee / main Maihar use camel bone which wears quickly and is often needing jawari. Also guage of strings matters. Lastly, tarafs can be tuned sometimes two or three notes away from where they'd like to be. Best ressonance is 4 notes from breaking point. Ex: If your longest taraf breaks from tension (not bad stringing) at the note F --- it will sound best around D. However, we often tune the longest taraf to madya saptak nishad, komal nishad, dhaivat or even komal dhaivat (say in Darbari). Well... the contact point on the taraf bridge is changing and the resonance will not be the same at all those.... So here in puryia dhanashree. if the tarafs were madya saptak : d, shuddah N, Sa, Komal r, Shuddah Gandar --- the gandar would likely be ideal, the komal dhaivat suffering. It's always a battle. Strings matter too. Tin coated? Or nickel polished? Do you want more taraf sustain or speaking immediately. Looong answer. Sorry. And I am just touching the surface.

@@shanemonds7748long answer is always the best answer. I do like the overlap of the tarabs much like the Anouska Shankar tone. But out of the pure traditional sitarists Pt. Nikhil Bannerjee is by far my favorite. His performance of Puriya Dhanashree is my favorite live performance on record. My main bridge is about 3/4ths open and is synthetic but my tarab bridge is the original stag horn and looks closed in angle. I’m not a jawargii by any stretch but I try my best. I use mapes strings around .009 gauge. Unfortunately, I have a custom made Naeem sitar that has all geared tuning knobs (it seemed like a good choice for bass guitarist at the time) and the rail for the tarabs is much like what is used for esraj or dilruba. This leads to more tension and I’ve had the rail replaced with better wood once and now the rail has been pulled close to the body again. The angle is very sharp, so I tune to the high da and down to the low ni. I often break strings because of angle of the tarabs. I have an older student travel sitar I may try to sort out to play in D and get new proper posts for it. Thank you for your response. You’re knowledge of the subject is truly invaluable and cannot express how appreciative I am for it.

@@Ahimsaabbott thank you . I am not sure how to email me. I can give advice. .009 is quite thin. I use .011, .01 only and play at D. We all love tarafs but as I matured as a satirist. I realized that overly speaking tarafs are unnatural in the sense that they don't really mimic the voice and can linger on beyond certain places in the raga. Uniformity and adding thickness and upper resonance to your sound is really what's important. Although I play imdadkhani style The best thing you can do is to fit the legs of your bridge to the tabli and identify where the nodes and antinodes are. You are wanting the energy transfer from the legs of the main bridge to activate the legs of the taraf bridge

@@shanemonds7748you are right, especially from the classical context of tarabs. They are more of a delay effect when sustained more like a piano or guitar pedal than the human voice. The human voice of course being the centerpiece of all Hindustani music. I think my years of playing úkulele Campanella style with overlapping notes turned me into the ‘psychedelic’ sitarist with the tarabs singing loudly. Thank you for your advise. I’m really grateful. I’m always pleasantly surprised, being from Appalachia, when I find anyone with knowledge of the workings of the most beautiful instrument in the world.

Certainly. Thank for your feedback. The book is called "The First Years Study" by Ali Akbar Khan and George Ruckert. here is a link to it on amazon a.co/d/0cl3f0ce