Danelectro Coral Sitar 3S19

The Danelectro Coral Sitar (model 3S19) is an electric sitar from 1967, manufactured as one of the products from the Coral line of the Danelectro company. Studio guitarist Vincent Bell came up with this six-stringed instrument, which is fundamentally an electric guitar with an elongated bridge for buzz and twanginess, hence resembling the sound of a sitar. This is augmented with a second set of 13 strings tuned like on an auto-harp, intended to be used like sympathetic strings on a real sitar to drone over what's played on the main guitar.

Andy Summers has a Coral electric sitar in his guitar collection. He was photographed trying out a real Sitar in 1980 around the time of The Police's concert in Bombay (present-day Mumbai). It's possible his encounter with the instrument led to the purchase of the Coral Sitar afterwards. It was listed amongst the extensive Ghost In The Machine tour program equipment list in 1981 - which fanzines around that time indicated to be the complete list of gear shipped by The Police to Montserrat for the Ghost sessions. Of course, a photo of Andy playing the sitar exists from around that period, indicating he may have used it on recordings as well.