Building an Electric Violin Hollow Body



Posted: Thursday, January 22, 2009

by
Wilcox Electric Violin Innovations

Hollow body electric violins have their own unique problems in construction even though they consist the same principle structures of traditional acoustic violins.

The first step is to develop a design so you can make up a template. Templates should be made out of material that remains stable such as Plexiglas or aluminum. From the template, a mold must be fabricated preferably made from high-density particleboard or something similar in stability. The mold must be engineered to retain the corner blocks and neck block while gluing the ribs. The mold should be carefully calculated at 7/32 smaller around the entire perimeter. After the sides have been glued to the blocks, the unit should be placed in a thinner retainer mold where the liners can be laminated and the bottom attached.

Now at this time, the process becomes real interesting because we need a neck. With an electric violin hollow body, the neck probably presents the biggest hurdle. Not only does the neck have to be cut and shaped to the appropriate angles and geometric curves but the neck angle has to be incremented to compensate for a flat non-arched top. If the electric violin hollow body is not symmetrical, then you must determine where the tailpiece or the tailpiece block to align the neck. Attaching the neck with yellow glue and a hefty screw from an engineering point of view is much more secure than the traditional block and neck fittings.

Constructing the top and back presents another problem if they are solid wood with no arch. The flatness creates instability but can easily be corrected by cutting grooves strategically on the inside of the top and back plates. The top plate should have some kind of projection hole cut and finally glued to the rest of the body.

In conclusion, we have discussed many of the structural problems dealing with electric violin hollow bodies however; the electrical aspects will bring a host of more complications that we will discuss in another article. As you can see an electric violin hollow body needs the skills and knowledge of a professional violin maker. For electric violins and helpful aids, we recommend

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