Official Luthiers Forum!

Can anyone out there in OLF land give me any steers towards information on building an electric fiddle? I'm interested in making one of the skeleton type rather than just putting a pickup on a normal one.

My wife has asked if I could make her one (this is an RCM trained ex LSO professional violinist, who has played the Liotti Strad!) and it is definitely in my best interests to comply!

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Colin

E mail Tim Phillips. He will help you out I'm sure. He makes fiddles for Eliza Carthy and Nancy Kerr. He's been very helpful to me in the past. Check out his website.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

Thanks Dave that's very useful, If he makes them for Eliza he must know what he's doing. My wife plays very similarly to Eliza, but she particularly wants a skeleton rather than an acoustic. Like me she has a cultural resistance to putting electrics into acoustic instruments, but has nothing against a wholly electric violin, it becomes a comletely different instrument.

What a family the Carthy/Watersons are! We played at a festival in Durham a few years ago and they were there. Penny and Eliza played together for about an hour or so in the pub. I worshipped at the feet of Martin in the sixties, and his partnership with Dave Swarbrick has more than a little to do with the way Penny and I play together.

Colin

Colin

_________________
I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Colin,

I'm sure Tim has made the skeleton types before. If you haven't already found it check this site out. Plenty of food for thought there. In terms of the construction aspects I doubt you will have many issues, you just need to find out about the right electronics to use and how that gets built in.

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010