Truss violin – I deigned, 3D printed and built a violin and I am releasing it open source August 18, 2023
Posted by GuySoft in open source, violin.Tags: 3D Printers, open electroncs, open source, violin
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Hey all,
In the past years I have had an ongoing project – I wanted an ultra-light modifiable electric violin. And finally I can share it with you.
This violin, weighs with all the parts on just 500 grams, which is the same as my acoustic violin. Moreover, the center of mass is close to the player making the violin feel lighter than an acoustic when playing.
This is made possible by an innovation I came up with, and have not seen anyone else do – The violin uses a truss like the one in a guitar neck, letting you balance the weight of the strings and tune the neck. This means that the violin can be printed with just a 15% infill making it ultra light (pegboard box at 20%).
I am not planning to start a violin-building business, so I see no reason to keep this to myself and I am releasing it. I ask you to give me some attribution, and consider releasing your design too. And perhaps a violin 🙂
This is the end result
The design
I made the design with the help of several mechanical engineers that I want to thank – Tal Reindel, Michael Lev-Ari Layoush, Itai Meshorer, and Don Corson. Also want to take the opportunity to thank Yair Grinberg, Oleh Shevchuk. It’s also based on the ElVioin v2 which is under the Creative Commons – Attribution – Share Alike license. So you can use it, share it, modify it and even sell it. But our particular design must also be released under the same license.
You can download the design files here.
(more…)New violin makers community August 27, 2018
Posted by GuySoft in music, open source.Tags: 3D Printers, community, discorse, open source, violin
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violinmakers.org logo
Hey all,
So I was going to post here about a violin I 3D printed and built, and then realised that this is a community waiting to happen. So I created a discourse forum called violinmakers.org. A place for people to share knowledge on how to build electric violin cellos and anything in between.
Electric violins today are usually heavier than their acoustic counterparts, 3D printing and carbon fibre makes it possible to print lighter violins with complex parts. Instead of spending a lot of time carving them in to heavy wood. The need is growing since nearly all music today is amplified.
The challenge is, that while modern instruments have been developing effects and new sounds, acoustic violins have been acoustic for the past 400 years. The years perfected acoustic violins, but this specialisation does not fully translate to electric violins, furthermore it makes it hard to top the rich sound of an acoustic. After all it takes more than a decade of practice to become an “ok” violin luthier.
Recently we achieved the ability to rapid prototype, plus we can learn from other instruments, such as electric guitars. Which have been creating amazing sound modelling techniques. With them I hope we can create new instruments. This is why I created the community.
There is already quite a long list of designs out there, shared in thingiverse mostly, but with little documentation on how to build them, and there is a lack of tests with pickups.
Pickups are am issue
Today, all available violins in the market use a piezo based pickup, this is because piezo pickups sense sound, they are mechanical. They were naturally chosen because they deliver a more acoustic sound, called electro-acoustic. Electric guitars use magnetic pickups, which have a more clear signal from the strings, but loose the acoustic sounds, which is compensated with amps and pedals. I have been playing with those too on violins, it might work. I know it was tested and abandoned around early 2000’s, but things have changed since. There are many more ways to experiment.
I hope that this forum will grow to be a larger community. At the moment I am the only one posting stuff, but I can already see traffic.
Comments, threads and more are welcome, and encouraged in the forum here, because the traffic should go there.
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