No. 3. Little Chubby. I have always had a problem with playing a full sized 4/4 fiddle. My arms and fingers are too short to reach around a full sized fiddle neck. However, I had no such problems playing the little cigar box fiddle that I had made. So, I decided to try to make a fiddle on the same scale as my cigar box fiddle. Looks kind of like a scrunched up fiddle. Thus my "Little Chubby" was born. It's made of curly maple with a redwood top. Yes, yes I carved the scroll, thank you. The maple was so hard, I used my finish sander w/ 80 grit paper to carve the back. The top was so soft, I wore right through it and had to patch it. The fingerboard is wide to match my stubby fat fingers. The body is almost 2 inches thick to make up for lost internal volume. Kind of hard to keep it under your chin. Can't get a chin rest to fit. Where the bridge is in the picture, 4/4 scale, not much sound. Put the bridge between the "f" holes, more sound but about 1/2 scale. Still had not figured the neck position vs. string height. Notice no tailpiece. Not in the traditional sense. The strings from a "traditional type tail piece places the strings at too sharp of an angle which cause the bridge to flop over. So, I attached a piece of wood to the tail end of the fiddle, vertically and attached the strings through 4 holes drilled in that. The piece of wood can be high enough to level the string out some so the bridge doesn't flop. I first tried maple. The string tension bent the maple. Next, ebony. It cracked under the pressure. Finally I use oak. It takes oak to hold all that tension. Later I found out that this is not such a novel idea. I found a picture of a pocket fiddle at Williamsburg, Va, that shows the very same setup for a tail piece. Of course this negate the use of standard fine tuners. However, the Suzuki type work very well. Well, at least its cute.
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