Spike lutes

thumb|Tokyo geisha with , thumb|Kitagawa Utamaro, "Flowers of Edo: Young Woman's Narrative Chanting to the ", thumb|A Japanese people|Japanese man playing a while another sings thumb|A accompanying the traditional Kouta (music)|kouta

musical instrument

thumb|upright|Kamancheh The kamancheh is an Iranian bowed string instrument used in Persian, Azerbaijani, Armenian, Kurdish, Georgian, Turkmen, and Uzbek music with slight variations in the structure of the instrument.

thumb|upright=0.6|A sanshin The is a Ryukyuan musical instrument and precursor of Japanese (). Often likened to a banjo, it consists of a snakeskin-covered body, neck and three strings.

The (, literally "three strings") is a three-stringed traditional Chinese lute. It has a long fretless fingerboard, and the body is traditionally made from snake skin stretched over a rounded rectangular resonator. It is made in several sizes for different purposes and in the early 20th century a four-stringed version, the , was developed. The northern is generally larger, at about in length, while southern versions of the instrument are usually about in length.

thumb|100px|right|Side view of an erhu, a common huqin

The sintir (), also known as the guembri (), gimbri, hejhouj in Hausa language, is a three stringed skin-covered bass plucked lute used by the Gnawa people of Morocco. It is approximately the size of a guitar, with a body carved from a log and covered on the playing side with camel skin. The camel skin has the same acoustic function as the membrane on a banjo. The neck is a simple stick with one short and two long goat strings that produce a percussive sound similar to a pizzicato cello, pedal harp, or double bass.

The cimboa (), also known as the cimbó , is a musical instrument from Cape Verde. It is a bowed chordophone that was traditionally used to be played with the batuque dances.