batahong

Sundatang is one of the traditional musical instruments in Sabah, Malaysia.This instrument ought to be further developed and upgraded to improve its quality and playability with other contemporary instruments. This paper presents the study of traditional construction techniques of sundatang that may serves as baseline information with regards to future improvement. From this study, it was found that the construction of sundatang involves nine stages including material preparation, forming the basic shape of sundatang, making of the air cavity, making of the back plate, making of the top plate and sound holes, making of the tuning pegs, making of the frets, fixing the fine tuner cord and finally tuning the strings of sundatang. The finding of this study could be important for future advancement of this instrument in order to make it more popular and well-accepted among with other contemporary musical instruments such as guitar,piano and violin.