David Burns said:

A flux capacitor, powered by 1.21 gigawatts!

Seriously, getting back to mounting a pick up in your violin.

 

If it were me, I would play the hell out of this thing for a few months, then mount a non-intrusive pick up and see if I could live with it. As a last resort, I would drill a hole in a one of a kind irreplaceable violin. I know you said the piezo thing is out, and the guitar type pick up is the way to go. What would a violin like that cost to have made? I know you said it was a gift, I am just curious.

I can live with the pu, I know that much already. I've had a pu on an other acoustic fiddle. It doesn't touch any vibrating part so it won't affect sound.

If Mr Hagan would have finished this intrument, he'd probably have it priced it to something between $ 600 and 1200. The price is theorethic, nobody would ever have bought an instrument like this. It looks strange and has a hardwood top. Gianna Violins says fiddlers don't like strange things even if they obviously sound good.

Then, to the cost of the instrument, some $ 200 will be added for the pickup.

That was how the discussion started. A classic fiddle has so many details adding more to the price than to the sound. We wrote back and forth about how a folk fiddle should be designed, where all unecessary details were eliminated. It also has a simplified scroll now that I carved myself with a Mora knife. It became a lot less simplified than the one I had in mind, but it looks okay.

The body is very big. The major reason is that I need a loud instrument, but it's also to give some extra low end for the fifth string. With normal fiddles I always get irritated that I can't rach the high positions comfortably - even electrics are constructed that way for some stupid reason. This one however has a deep cuttaway for close to full access to the higher positions.

For aestethical reasons I wanted no overhang on the top and the bottom. Of course that was a big misstake, so now a carpenter is making to bindings for the lower half of the body. The bindings as well as the rest of the edges around top and bottom will be painted gold...! Wonderfully kitschy and I've never seen that on a fiddle.

Maybe I could attach a jack to a chinrest and mold it in to epoxy.

Fiddlerman said:

Well, logically after looking at those pictures I fear that if you did it the way they did you would risk vibration noises from the wires. There are solutions for that though. The pick-up could be excellent though. I look forward hearing about the follow up when you are done.

I won't be using a REBO, can't afford that. Found some bass-pickup maker in Gävle who's willing to make a pu to half that price after my drawings. But I'd be very interested in trying and hearing a REBO pu. They're low impedant though, maybe not really my style.