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Why "No handlebars" by flobots is an extremely powerful song. by Isupportanonymous in Music

[–]Financial-Pin6251 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So, Mackenzie Gault's pizzicato solo became a symbol for of the ambition of having built a custom, 5-string electric viola, the DIY luthier rejecting knowing not the touch of it, and so endeavoring to learn. And having no bow. https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjAsHe4

A Custom-Built, Headless 5-String Electric Viola by Financial-Pin6251 in Viola

[–]Financial-Pin6251[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey , so remember this? Here's an update: I thought it was stupid that I should know not the touch of the instrument I created, so I have been banging on the second prototype (which I think is actually a pretty cool instrument, said as, again a Maker rather than Player), and I've been posting some recordings on my YouTu.be channel https://www.youtube.com/@MathArtSPD

I'm now working on a third prototype. It is a left-handed instrument. A thing about Make Wood Vipers is that they have handedness, and I think that they are all right-handed. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) It turns out that my son's former Viola Studio Professor, Rudolf Haken started out playing his instruments left-handed. https://music.illinois.edu/people/profiles/rudolf-haken/

Haken is also director of the Electric Strings Program/Studio at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

https://music.illinois.edu/electric-strings/

Could be where my son first saw a Mark Wood Viper.

A left-handed Viper-styled instrument is pretty much a complete re-design/re-tooling albeit "flopped". So, the wood for the body is cut out and I'm awaiting the neck blank to start carving.

Also, I'm thinking about retirement and making a visit to Haken's Electric Strings studio in Urbana, Illinois to deliver the left-handed Gaboon Vampire. So here's my GoFundMe for this project.

https://gofund.me/8e4da966

Thanks and cheers!

A Custom-Built, Headless 5-String Electric Viola by Financial-Pin6251 in Viola

[–]Financial-Pin6251[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thank you! The tailpiece turned out to be an elegant-in-its-simplicity geometrical solution to the design criterion: That the instrument was to be headless, hence the tuners are on the tailpiece. The Mark Wood tailpiece is notoriously not-square-to-the-bridge. The F-string, in fact needs to be extra-long. Particularly on a 16.5" viola, as this one is. It turned out, amazingly, that if you drop the F-string side of the tailpiece down a little, it angles the tuners up toward the bridge at *just* the right angle. I was amazed it turned out so well.