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"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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Oh very cool.
Opportunity is often missed because it wears suspenders and looks like hard work.
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For an experiment this crude, I didn't bother with making a pickup for it. I just set the tail of the piece of maple on top of the bridge of my electric violin.
Mostly I wanted to see what sort of a sound I could get from bowing a bit of nylon line, and if it actually would bow with just a violin bow and rosin.
But it bows pretty easily and the sound is fairly nice, even tuned for the low string of a cello and at cello length. So I am toying with the idea of maybe trying making a more playable instrument with it.
The particular bit of nylon line I used was about 1.7 mm thick. It tuned ok to the cello low C pitch and then the G above that, but felt *very* tight at D and snapped before I could get it up to A. So I think it might work for the two lowest strings, but I'd need something thinner for the other two strings. Thinking about checking to see if local music stores stock single nylon guitar strings and what thicknesses they have available. Failing that, perhaps fishing line.
I know they also make thicker weed trimmer line, so it might also be possible to get something that would work down in the range of the upright bass.
Just some fun tinkering and experimenting. LOL
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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Yeah, I haven't been fishing since my teens, so I don't have any around the house. But I do have friends who go fishing, so it's definitely an option. No idea what thickness would be good for what string/note, but I can use this contraption as a test jig and just put some different thickness pieces on and tune it up until I find out what it sounds good at and how high it can go before it breaks to figure it out, I reckon.
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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I kind of like the sound. It makes me wonder if maybe under the bridge may not be the best location for a pickup on all electric bowed strings. I can't think of how to do it with a violin, offhand, but doing an electric cello or upright bass, maybe somewhere out near the tailpiece saddle might be a nicer sound.
Ah well, so many experiments, so little time. I do have a call out to some friends who fish for some different thicknesses of nylon fishing line, as per Ferret's suggestion.
"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman
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