I have been mulling over a fiddle build for a while, and doing some research while deciding what path I want to take.
I have an old western cedar box I was going to use, it is a little longer and narrower than any cigar boxes I have found, but planning around it has revealed it to still be too short and too wide to really work out very well.
So I have been leaning toward scratch building my own box, and considering what materials to use, without getting too carried away. I have been thinking along the lines of western cedar back and sides, maybe a spruce top, about 13 inches long, and 5 inches wide. Possibly distressing it and "aging" it a bit for some charactar and patina.
Anyway, back to the point of my post, while doing some studying on the subject I came across some stuff of interest. A lot of science and study about what makes a good violin "good" so to speak. And along the way I also came across this information about an "experimenter" who builds violins out of very non traditional materials and designs. Thought some of you might enjoy this.
Introduction and interview
And some sound bites and video:
Replies
Very interesting,
I attended a lecture last year given by the designers of a company who are designing and building guitars from all sorts of tech materials and specifically carbon fibre.
In order to demonstrate alternative materials they had a one string fiddle built with an expanded polystyrene body. Not a great sound but it did work.
My cigar box fiddle had a custom box because of the shortcomings of standard cigar box sizes and I have long been thinking of using balsa for an acoustic fiddle. Apparently balsa - because of its structure - is supposed to be good for sound generation.