I wonder if any fellow musicians here own and use a zither. I think it might be the best acoustic instrument for ambient music. Laraaji and Klaus Wiese inspired me to play one. I actually have an antique fretless zither made by Oscar Schmidt, which still sounds pretty decent, as well as a toy one that I had bought for really cheap a while back, but that one doesn't sound good imo.
I wouldn't mind putting some new strings on the antique one but I'm kind of scared to do that on my own as I've never done it before.
For anyone who does have one and record with it, how do you like to treat it with the effects? I like to apply a reasonable amount of chorus and reverb without it becoming unrecognizable. Flanger can be decent if you want to go for something more abstract. I applied flanger to my toy zither on my album Chamber Music, giving it an aquatic sound.
Every kind of zither is open for discussion BTW.