{"id":732,"date":"2007-04-25T22:52:55","date_gmt":"2007-04-25T12:52:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=732"},"modified":"2007-04-25T22:52:55","modified_gmt":"2007-04-25T12:52:55","slug":"electric-fiddle-modified","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/?p=732","title":{"rendered":"Electric fiddle – modified"},"content":{"rendered":"

Many of you will know that when we were in China I bought an electric violin – a fine piece of Guangzhou engineering – great sound for recording, but tiring to play for any length of time because it’s quite a bit heavier than a normal violin.<\/p>\n

\"Electric<\/p>\n

That set me wondering about how I might reduce the weight – I thought about putting in some tasteful holes in the side to give it that ‘industrial’ look, but after liberal application of the forstner bits it wasn’t aesthetically pleasing. So I had a re-think. I would need a stub wing on the right for position work and I would need enough belly to hold a shoulder rest – but was the rest of the superstructure really necessary? <\/p>\n

\"Electric<\/p>\n

The whole thing is made from a fairly dense craftwood so I set to work with the bandsaw and removed segments of the skeletal violin shape – that was a bit better on the weight. And so to the main strut to which the neck was attached. There is a fairly crudely routed box section for the electronics, but the rest seemed to be a solid plank. <\/p>\n

\"Electric<\/p>\n

I tested with a couple of discreet drill holes and found it was indeed solid MDF – no wonder thing thing weighed so much! I took to the main strut with a couple of sizes of forstner bit in the drill press and took a series of impressions. Then I joined them to make a cavity – not all the way through, but about two-thirds so there would still be plenty of strength. I still need to do a lot of finishing work on the back, but you’ll get the idea.<\/p>\n

\"Electric<\/p>\n

A LOT of shavings later and the fiddle is now substantially lighter – not quite as light as the kevlar Guscott ones, but certainly light enough to use in performance without putting my neck out \ud83d\ude42 <\/p>\n

I agree that it has lost some of the aesthetic quality, but it will work well as a good workhorse electric fiddle<\/p>\n

Cheers
\nJerry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Many of you will know that when we were in China I bought an electric violin – a fine piece of Guangzhou engineering – great sound for recording, but tiring to play for any length of time because it’s quite a bit heavier than a normal violin. That set me wondering about how I might […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-732","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-journal","category-music","category-woodwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}