CatMcCall said

Did I miss the thread that talks about this project? Where are the details? 

This is the thread.

Around 2003 or something I visited the homepage of mr Edward Hagan, The Flying Farmer. I dropped him an e-mail to say some positive words on his creation. We exchanged some mail discussing the uniformity in the making of fiddles and I mentioned some about how I'd like a fiddle fiddle to be and how impossible it is to find a fiddle matching your actual needs, not the needs of some Stradökeidnwui guy many hundred years ago. This ended up in him making an instrument similar to the imaginary one I'd described. Back and ribs are made from walnut and the soundboard is maple.

We've had some contact now and then, and this summer he decided to send me this fiddle - or at least a body with a neck.There was a lot to be done - and still is - before it's a playable instrument. The instrument is huge, so I needed I viola case and extra long screws for the chinrest. The chinrest also needs to be raised because of the radical arching of the soundboard. Finding a fivestring tailpiece also took some time. Besides I decided that I wanted it pigmented somewhat. The white soundboard will make a nice contrast to the natural finished walnut and the golden stripes.

This week I'll spray some coats of clear varnish on it. I'm also waiting for the pickup which has caused some problem. The stringspace is very small, and the coils are too big, so they must be positioned diagonally. I'll probably cut the fingerboard diagonally too, to make it look better. The chinrest has a hole for the telejack so I won't open the ribs. The cable will be drawn on the inside though, so there will be two holes in the soundboard, one at the end of the fingerboard where the cable goes down and onte hidden behind the tailpiece where it comes up again.

I've removed all the white paint. I couldn't get it even over the whole surface.

I'd already started the clearcoating when I realized it wouldn't work. So I've sanded through two layers of clear varnish and deep down into the wood to get rid of the color. I've also damaged the golden stripe along the top, so my work tonight will be restoring that one.

I have a can of white-pigmented laquer and maybe I'll make a try with that one and hope for better results than with the water dye.

The treatment is far from perfect. I got some white dye-laquer over the top and sanded most of it off. The top has a pleasant blond color but stains of solid white. It's good enough for me, but one day I may wish the top had a perfect look. The only way then is probably solid white all over the top.

Maybe I should have waited yet one week or two for the paint to harden, but a package of viola strings arrived and I put them on along with an E string that came with the fiddle.

I discovered one minor error in the construction, tailbutton is not in line with the middle string, so the tailpiece is not really straight. Doesn't seem to affect the sound though and it's not extremely appearant visually either.

Have no shoulder rest yet, so I can't really play all my usual things. Five strings will take some time to get used to... I always have problems hitting one string, and the tighter the strings are grouped together related to fingerboard radius, the harder it gets. On my old acoustic, string space is standard violin and fingerboard radius is classical style. This one has a very flat fingerboard and string space is small, so I must learn to be gentle with the bow. I might try a bridge with a more radical arch, but I believe the bridge arch should be related to the fingerboard arch, otherwise there will probably be intonation problems. The extra bass string opens up a new world though. I often play in the key of E minor, and when I play the Bm chord, I've always wanted a low F# in the bass. This tone I have on the C-string.

Haven't played it much yet but the tone seems to be excellent. My old one has a harsh dry and short woody tone while this fiddle sings. It almost has an aftertone like plucked instruments. I look forward to trying it with a brass bridge in the future. Dense materials tend to have very high and painful tone, but in this case, with the depth of the instrument itself, this should be no problem. If this becomes a problem, I could perhaps solve this making the bridge thinner.

I will take some pictures, and when I've learnt to play this beast, some clips will hopefully show up on Youtube.