Other Strings

Chicken Cooker Dobro

2007-02-24T21:34:00.000-08:00

Ok I admit that I have been going a little Photoshop crazy lately, but the Robots made me do it.

Here we find another of my attempts at using up some of the junk that has been pilling up for the past ten years. I had actually made this for Jen for Christmas so she could bring it into work. I was quite proud that I was able to piece together four busted up guitars into one functioning instrument, and I was pleasantly surprised at how good it sounded. Unfortunately about a month after the holidays she came home with busted guitar. The bridge had snapped clean off. Instead of trying to repair it I turned it into the instrument you see before you. Of course I had to add the chicken cooker. It just would scream iner if there wasn’t one. I made one of these a few years ago, but then completely forgotten about it. You can click here to see it if you like. I have three more guitar bodies, and three more chicken cookers. I think there may be a theme coming out soon.

Cheers

iner

Three Stringed 78 Case bass

2007-02-15T21:35:00.000-08:00

Maple Syrup Bass Ukulele

2007-02-10T21:36:00.000-08:00

Weed Whacker Stringed Banjolele

2007-01-23T21:37:00.000-08:00

Weed Whacker Stringed Gas Canolele

2007-01-22T21:39:00.000-08:00

Sideways Three Stringed Tincanjoe in open D

2007-01-20T21:48:00.000-08:00

Little Red Banjo

2007-01-19T21:40:00.000-08:00

Wooden Cased Bungee Cord Bass

2007-01-18T21:41:00.000-08:00

Kikkoman two stringed Bungee Bass

2007-01-04T21:44:00.000-08:00

Bungee Cord Bass Three in Red

2007-01-04T21:42:00.000-08:00

The Chicken Cooker and the Spatula

2006-11-21T21:46:00.000-08:00

Yet again another fine instrument brought to you by the fine folks at Chicken Cookers inc. They have been secretly subsidizing my art for years now, but it has only been recently that I have been able to speak open and freely about it.

Really that’s all I have to say about this piece, aside from look at the fact that this is the first time I used a spatula to mount the strings everything is kind of the same as all the other chicken cooking instruments out there.

The electro-acoustic dobro/MV 3

2006-11-05T17:56:00.000-08:00

What can i say about this one. It was made from two busted up acoustic guitars. A chicken cooker (I just love those things) and a real nice pick up given to me by Alex.
For the most part I stay away from building conventional instruments, but this one was screaming at me to be built. Plug it in, or play it acoustically. It's up to you.
I have set the strings up the same as the MV1 and the MV2. Hence the name The Electro-acoustic Dobro/MV3. For those of you that have no idea what I am talking about I will now take this moment to explain. The MV1, MV2, and now the MV3 are all set up as slide instruments, with two of the six strings raised about an 8th of an inch above the other four. With the MV1 and MV2 I also added a whole wack of sympathetic strings. On the MV3 I did not.

Wok Star

2006-11-04T15:40:00.000-08:00

Well I am sorry to say that this instrument didn’t quite work out as well as I wanted. I do love the way it looks and how it sounds, but the body is too weak to support the tension of the strings. I may have to devise some sort of post to run through the body. As you may have guessed from the title of this piece that this instruments body is made from a wok. At one point I was going to try a hammer the wok out into a cymbal, but that just seemed like way to much work. Moving right along, the face plate is a serving plate I found at a junk shop out west. I am really starting to like those things and you can find them everywhere. The bridge is the handle of an old alarm clock I found at a Salvation Army, which I also love.

So all that aside, even though the instrument is practically impossible to tune, the sounds I get out of it are pretty neat. With just an open strum and some pressure on the neck, you can get a really nice eerie drone out of it. Having the wok really helps it resonate. Maybe I should leave it as it is and rename it to the bend and drone.

Here are some comments that were left for this instrument.

missy_2_shoes said...: ...I wonder if Ancient Chinease Secret could be persuaded to play this? Very cool, right down to the name.; 12:04 PM

Sympathetic Sitar Harp

2006-11-04T15:32:00.000-08:00

Perhaps the most ambitious musical project to date, the instrument with no name is a seventeen stringed instrument of sympathetic proportions.
At this point I will randomly go on about a few of the construction mishaps of this wonderful instrument. I carved the head and neck out of a few pieces of pine I had laying around the space room. I know, pine is not the best wood to use, but when one is using junk and garbage as materials, one can not be that picky. I must say that before I started carving the head I thought to myself, how hard can it be to carve a great large swirl out of pine? Hell, I’m the king of swirls. It was only a few short hours later that I realized being king was a lot tougher then it looks. The swirl looks a bit misshapen and the overall effect give it that sci-fi fantasy look that only belonged to the Seventies. Maybe I should airbrush a topless woman ridding a unicorn somewhere on the instrument. What could I do? When the swirl calls I have to answer. That was just part of the deal.

Moving right along, I will now quickly go over some of the other materials I used in building this instrument. As you can see from the images I have once again used a salad bowl for the resonance chamber of the instrument. I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of the old metallic salad bowl bit, for one they sound great and are unlike anything I could build. Secondly, they are dirt cheep and they can be found in just about every second hand store. Next on my list of materials often used would be the seventies style wood paneling. This material has certainly come up in the ranks over the past few years, now whenever I am on my way to a new job site I hope and pray that we will be tearing apart some bodies Grandparents basement, Though saying that now I realize that it is not in fact Grandparents that have these kinds of basemental decorative ideas, but a few of our own Parents as well, and that subject will be left at that. Now back to the paneling. This stuff is great, I like it for so many reasons, and now I’m going to list a few. First and most obvious is the price, you can’t beat free. Next, this is a very easy material to work with, easy to store, easy to cut, easy to attach to salad bowls, and lets not forget about its greatest selling feature, the thickness of the paneling itself. This stuff is very thin, which means very light, which is good. If you do find that it may be too thick you can always take up layers of the board. As you can see in some of the images this has already been done to certain sections. I am now officially board with material talk.
OK moving on to some of the things that pissed me off about this new piece. Let’s see, off the top of my head I would have to say that putting the harp in, creating the two bridges, and figuring out how to fret this beast were the three worst. They were so bad that I put this instrument off to the side for just over three months. I’ll start with the harp part of it, because that was my first and most damaging road block. I had just come off this three day tuning peg binge, using the pegs I had salvaged off an old harp from an uprights pianos sound board. Well little did I know before I started this binge was that the drill bit I was using for the peg holes was just a bit too big. What can I say, countless numbers of holes drilled meaninglessly into countless numbers of experimental instruments. Needless to say I was devastated when I discovered the errors of my ways. Since then I have been seeking counsel for my addiction and restrict my tuning peg drilling to one instrument at a time.

Now my next problem was all to do with the construction of the two bridges. The first bridge was for the sympathetic strings so I could mount it close to the body. The second bridge however had to be raised up about an inch and a half (I know, I’m Canadian, I should be using metric) if I were to do this I would somehow have to compensate for the tension and height then all I could do was hope and pray that the Gods of all instruments messed up would smile upon me. It was a grueling few days, but in the end I came out victorious. Though visually I and not one hundred percent sold, on a functional level I was more then happy. This is where many of my problems lie in experimental instrument sculpting. Do I settle for function or design? Moving right along to my final and perhaps most daunting task and that was the fret board. The frets are set up like an acoustic guitar which is easy enough, but how in the name of Zeus am I going to have them raised up in order for the sympathetic strings to successfully run underneath? All this time wasted thinking about how I could do it. The sleepless nights, the fights with my loved ones, the unexplained bruising I discovered on my legs one day. All of this was a direct result of not even knowing where to begin with this problem, while all the time it was laying right in front of me, quite literally it was right in front of me the whole time. In front of me and in my way most of the time. It was my fret stick, I know, I know. We all have one, but most of us are afraid to admit it. Well I’m not, in fact this fret stick saved my fragile eggshell mind. You see all I had to do was lay this fret stick on top of the neck of the instrument, after that everything was easy, bent up a bunch of aluminum rods and screw them right into the neck over top of the fret stick, all the frets in place and I was ready to go. The only problem I had now was getting that damn stick out from under them, but that’s a story for another day.

This could be my longest blog entry ever. If you have gotten to the bottom of this and have not fallen asleep do to boredom you are truly a crazy person, but that makes me love you all the more.

Here are some comments that were left for this instrument.

Bri said...: hey your site is neat. it's too bad i can't listen to a sound clip of this. you know you can do that free audio posting thing blogger offers with your cellphone at least.
thanks for sharing
brian; 10:27 PM

Six Stringed Fretless Acoustic

2006-11-04T15:31:00.002-08:00

Hand Drum Three String

2006-11-04T15:31:00.001-08:00

El más largo del largo

2006-11-04T15:30:00.001-08:00

Fishstrument

2006-11-04T15:27:00.000-08:00

Here are some comments that were left for this instrument.

Anonymous said...

Just brilliant and inspiring. Just started making cigar box guitars but this has me thinking about other ideas now. regards David Ward

Erhu 2

2006-11-04T15:25:00.000-08:00

Good Times for a Sick Mind

2006-11-04T15:22:00.000-08:00

Is it a prison? Is it an instrument? Nobody knows for sure. In order for this instrument to work at 100 percent capacity you need to trick a small Poecile atricapillus or Cyanocitta stelleri into entering the hole on the top of the instrument. I suggest a nice seed mixture. You can make it up yourself, or purchase it from a local shop owner. It is up to you to find the appropriate business in your city or town. I strongly suggest you avoid the Branta Canadensis or Gavia immer as these are both way to large to fit through the hole, and by all means stay away from the Corvus coraxthey scare the heck out of me.
Once you have secured your package you must quickly string the instrument up before they become wise to your plans. This can be tricky as most avionic creatures are evil in nature and have probably already figured out what it is that you are doing. Now that the instrument is strung up gently shake out your seed mixture unless you are looking for a shaker sound. All you have to do now is tune your instrument and start playing. The plucking and sweet sounds of the chirp chirp chirp will entertain you for hours on end.
Ok I have been contacted by a group of anonymous legal types that have strongly suggested that I put in this description that doing any of the above would be cruel and unjust, and there is a good chance that I might end up doing time for said crimes. I have also been advised to inform all readers that no animals were hurt in the construction of this instrument, and I take no responsibility for any sick persons desire to construct this instrument to its full potential. If you do, you are sick, and need help. I wash my hands of all of this madness.
I almost forgot. The instrument is constructed from a wooden wine box I found in the garbage; unfortunately the wine had already been consumed. The pegs were made from chair legs, and the slide tuners were stripped out of an old equalizer from an eight track player, and the strings are just regular strings, only a lot shorter.

The Spy vs. Spy Sitar

2006-11-04T15:18:00.000-08:00

So this really isn’t a Sitar at all, nor was it meant to be. This was one of those instruments that took a very long time to figure out what it wanted to be. I was kind of just flying by the seat of my pants on this one. Oh wait, that’s how I build all of these things.

The Sitar part of the name came from the nice droning buzz sound I get out of it. I think it has a lot to do with the bridge I used. It was a curved piece of ceramic tile from a kitchen I worked on last week.

The Spy vs. Spy part of the name came from Jen. Sometimes Jen is crazy, but this time she was crazy. That makes no sense, and that’s how I like it. Mind you ever since she said that all I can see is Spy vs. Spy. It reminds me of the first time somebody told me the Jimi Hendricks line was “excuse me, while I kiss this guy” The song has never been the same.

The instrument was constructed out of knotty pine (I do like Knotty Pine) from the family run hardware store down the street. The face of the body was from a demolished basement, and it is in fact real fake wood paneling from the Seventies. Finally the back of the instrument is another of those lovely salad bowls.

The fret board was set up as a “Classical long” From Stewart-MacDonald web site. He has a great fret calculator on there that I use for most of my fretted instruments

http://www.stewmac.com/

My Oblique Strategy for the Spy vs. Spy Sitar was Overtly resist change

Here are some comments that were left for this instrument.

Anonymous said...: yer comin' awful close to dissin' the Jen there, better watch it or she'll kick yer butt.

Shouldn't it be 'naughty pine'?; 2:44 PM

2006-11-04T15:15:00.000-08:00

So this instrument is badly in need of a name. Anybody out there with any ideas, please, help me out here.

I made this out of scrap pieces of wood from the larger scrap pieces of wood that I get from job sites, the streets of Parkdale, and furniture my friends and family give me. I do like to use salvaged material. It’s my way of making me feel better about all my other sins, and trust me folks, there are many. The tuning pegs came of a coat rack that I obviously dismantled. I have been quoted as saying “I don’t believe in hanging coats” It’s true. The round things on the head of this instrument were wooden cupboard knobs. Is that not fascinating? Wow.

My Oblique Strategy for this instrument was Discard an axiom

So far only two entries have been submitted for the “it kind of looks Greek” instrument
1. “NonSpoon” by The Lone Guitarist
2. “Euclid's Beltbuckle” posted by Anonymous, but I think I know who it is. I’m looking in Warwick’s general direction
I’m still waiting for the one that jumps out and grabs me. I am leaning slightly towards Wicks choice right now.
Two more to add to the list
3. "Mjollner" by thefirstbardo
4. "Balabanjo" "Banjolaika" and " Fuckaranjolaika" these three entries were by Alex_n
5. Somebody going by the name of Felix the Cat has suggested the TriLyre. This one is growing on me.

Here are some of the comments that were left for the odd instrument.

The Lone Guitarist said...: I think you should call it the NonSpoon because it isnt a spoon. Theres no logic in there so dont try and look for any lol. keep up the inspirational work; 3:49 PM
Anonymous said...: Hmm.
How bout 'Euclid's Beltbuckle'
because Euclid was the father of geometry (and it is quite a geometric object), and beltbuckle because, well, because it isn't I guess.; 2:48 PM
ThefirstBardo said...: Something having to do with Mjollner, Thor's hammer. But that would be Norse, not Greek. So hpw about the Norse Hammer or better yet, The Nørdic Håmmer.; 5:27 PM
alex_n said...: Looks like a fore-shortened Balalaika and a fucked up banjo had a kid...with rivets!

Balabanjo?
Banjolaika?
Fuckaranjolaika?; 3:14 PM
Felix the Cat said...: How about TriLyre. A lyre is a Greek instrument related to the harp, but hell, who cares, if you dig the name.; 5:52 PM
Anonymous said...: I think it looks Russian. And it reminds me of a super-sleek jet fighter, but it's too long for a fighter. Oh, wait — I've got it:

BalaConcordea

elan

The Ragga

2006-11-04T15:13:00.001-08:00

My Oblique Strategy for the Ragga was Slow preparation..Fast execution

Alien Folk Dulcimer

2006-11-04T06:30:00.000-08:00

My Oblique Strategy for the Alien folk Dulcimer is Turn it upside down

Upright Bungee Cord Bass

2006-10-24T21:49:00.000-07:00

The Fiddle and the Zither

2006-10-23T21:51:00.000-07:00

Sister of the Door-o-phone

2006-10-13T21:52:00.000-07:00

I really don’t have much to say about this instrument. I enjoyed the layout of the Door-o-phone and thought I could reproduce it. I don’t really think it came out with the same feel to it. It was hung in a show and forgotten about until I found the Raga and the Drone in my files. I also wanted to use up the nylon strings that have been in my string box for far to long.

Banjito

2006-08-15T21:31:00.000-07:00

My sweet Banjito, I had no idea how much I missed you until you came into my life. All these years without even knowing what you were, and then a rash decision in New Brunswick to leave my homeland led me to your skeleton, which in turn led to your creation. As a rule I like to stay away from buying old broken instrument bodies, but when I came across this frame in Maine I knew it would be insane to refrain. It was the sweetest ten American dollars I have ever spent, and now I'm glad I did. Up until two days ago I was content to have you hang on my wall forever, untouched by my hands and my madness, but alas, things in this apartment rarely stay the same. Sometimes all it takes is a few hours on the couch staring off into space for a really good idea to hit me, and hit me you did. I now think I am going to have to change my policy on instruments busted and bloodied, broken and blue. This one piece has inspired me to do an entire series of Spare Parts Experimental Instruments.

As I say, the neck and the body were found at a flea market in Maine. The head was half of a two piece kid's bongo set which, once separated, was again cut in half. I have to thank my friend Mike Whitla for those. The saddle came from eBay, but at the time I thought I was buying a bag of nuts, so go figure. And the black thing it's mounted on is a remnant from the fire at my buddy Brian's place (many a good instrument, and pieces of art were lost that day) Even the screws holding it together came from my friend and boss, Jules of Jules and Tools, and yes, if you were wondering, I do in fact make up one of the tools in the Jules and Tools conglomerate. I guess the only thing that was mine was the cheese grater I found in our utensils drawer which I have no recollection of buying, so it must have been Jen's. I guess the only contribution I added to it was the strings, and you can buy those anywhere.

Now I just have to find somebody brave or crazy enough to try and play my sweet Banjito. Any takers?

Iner and Banjito out.

1 comments:

Mike Whitla said...

So those bongos were handy.
8:45 AM

Double Thumb Piano Zither

2006-06-01T18:04:00.000-07:00

My Oblique Strategy for the Double Thumb Piano Zither is Abandon Normal Instruments

Tincanjoe

2006-06-01T18:03:00.000-07:00

It had to be done. Jen came home one day with a book on tin can art and I was hooked.

My Oblique Strategy for the Tincanjoe was Forced with a choice do both (Given by Diter Rot)

the Door-o-Phone

2006-06-01T18:02:00.000-07:00

I think it was Dave who came up with the name for this one, and it is Dave who has hidden this instrument away from me. This is one of the only photos that exist of the Door-o-Phone.

One day we shall be reunited, until then I will think of you fondly.

My Oblique Strategy for the Door-o-Phone was Simply a matter of work

Spare Parts Wall Mount

2006-06-01T18:01:00.001-07:00

My Oblique Strategy for the Spare Parts Wall Mount was Trust in the you of now

Electro Little Fiddle

2006-06-01T18:01:00.000-07:00

This is my first real attempt at trying to document the steps one would take when deciding to build a functional and aesthetically pleasing experimental instrument. I did put a lot of work into the sound design of this particular instrument. There is a sound post placed just under the bridge, and a piece of wood glues on to the underside running length wise that is suppose to pick up more of the bass of the instrument. It also has a contact mic build directly into the belly of this strange beast. The neck was found somewhere close to Niagara Falls. I was in a rental with my brother in-law and the rest just gets a little blurry for that weekend. I also use the same neck piece to repair Alex’s Left Handed Bass, but that’s a story for another day. The rest of the body I built myself. As you can tell it looks something like a triangle. That’s because things with too many curve make me feel uncomfortable. The output is on the left hand side of the instrument, a simple quarter inch output. I do wish I had of put a volume control somewhere.

So plug it in and rock on, or something along those lines. Maybe you’re into Jazz?

Unfortunately I never really got the chance to play, or rather in my case, make horrible screeching cat death like noises. This instrument along with almost all my others is currently hanging in a show I have in Parkdale. The place is called Mitzi’s Sister. It’s a great place to see live bands seven days a week for free. They also have a great permanent collection of art hanging in the music area done by yours truly. Just scroll down this increasing large page to find out which instruments are there.

Sitar Fan

2006-06-01T18:00:00.001-07:00

Buzz Zither

2006-06-01T18:00:00.000-07:00

Round Bowed String Thing

2006-06-01T17:59:00.001-07:00

MV4 the Chicken Cooker in Green

2006-06-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

I had to do it; the Chicken Cooker in Green was at best a mediocre wall piece, and now it is something much more special to me. Strung up the same as the MV1, the MV2, and the Electro-acoustic Dobro/MV3, now I have something to play when I get together for my weekly jam. Something wonderful has happened to the Single String and it has nothing to do with me.

The idea came to me as I was traveling around the Niagara Region this past long weekend. Whenever we go away, second hand and junkshops are always on the agenda. I can usually find one of my beloved grill plates on these excursions. This long weekend I wasn’t so lucky in that department. I had also just taken my

show down from Mitzi’s Café in Parkdale where the original Chicken Cooker in Green was hanging. When I came home I had decided that it was time to take some of the less successful of instruments and start rebuilding them, making them stronger and faster. Oh wait, that’s something else.

The Chicken Cooker in Green, or as we say in the biz the CCG was the first on the list, mainly because it was sitting on the floor in the downstairs hallway being tripped over every time you walked by, even if you could see it. I did use some of my new acquisitions in the rebuilding

process. There were a few neat things that I found. Hopefully I will post their outcomes in the next few weeks. Just click on the instruments I spoke of above if you would like to read more about there good and bad times. So now the CCG it has been rebuilt into the MV4CCG, and I’m much happier now. Oh wait, that was also something else.

Here is a sketch I did prior to the re-construction of the Chicken Cooker in Green. As you can see, it didn't turn out exactly as I had planned, but that's the way it goes some time.
I have posted other sketches throughout the blog.

Metal Gopichand

2006-06-01T17:58:00.001-07:00

I found this instrument in a pile of trash in my space room. It was something I built many years ago and forgotten about. When I found it had about ten useless strings on it. Five different speakers place at various points on the instrument that I wired all together in hopes of finding some interesting kind of pick up, that didn’t work at all. For the most part I would stay away from using a speaker as a microphone, but experiment, on the rare occasion it does work like with the Sunflower of Death. I also used a contact mic with the Sunflower. There were also three tin cans with racket balls mounted in them to be used with sticks. These sucked, they really, really sucked. So after I found this mess I was ready to just throw it out. It wasn’t until I was half way through striping it for screws, nuts and bolts that I realized the Metal Gopichand could be built back into its original idea. I often find that if I work on something too long I end up over doing the instrument, or any form of art for that matter. Sometimes simplicity is best. I know it is a simple instrument, but it’s easy to build, and you can get some neat sounds out of it. All you have to do is pluck the string and apply pressure to the two arms, squeezing them in and out as you pluck.

The Hairdryer Harp

2006-06-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

All you need is an old body from a salon hairdryer, a chicken cooking grill plate, and some parts from an old chair. OK maybe some tuning pegs and guitar strings thrown in for sound.
This piece came together quite by accident. I was working on some percussive instrument and was looking for some small pieces of metal to add for visual stimulation. Most of my stimulating metal lived in what is now the body of the Hairdryer Harp. As I was rooting through my collection of metal bits it came to me like a thief in the night. Well not really, but it sounds better that way. I always have a few extra cooking plates lying around for just such a moment. So when the idea of building a harp from a hairdryer came into my head I knew just where to go. I dumped out the shinny metal bits on the floor, where they still lay. The chair parts were lost a few months ago under our too small to be comfortable couch. The grill plates are scattered throughout our apartment, and the machine heads and strings are at Steve’s Music downtown. It’s that easy. I think I might put the fan blower back in just in case I need to do something with my hair.

The Bowed Web of Tacky Instruments

2006-06-01T17:57:00.000-07:00

This is by far the ugliest of all the instruments I have built, and for some reason that makes me love it all the more. It was suppose to be a simple hand drum in the beginning. Sometimes these things have a life of there own, and there is absolutely nothing you can do about it.

So I guess it's kind of like a cross between a cello and a banjo made from a snare drum. It's not as scary as it sounds. There are only two frets on the instrument, but they sit about three inches off the neck. There are three bowed strings, two drone strings, and one sympathetic string. I have no idea why that their, aside from the fact that I had one tuning peg without a string. That's good enough of a reason for me. The swirls are from one my metal dresses that was mostly destroyed in a fire. I'm glad this little bit found itself a new home.

Even if that home is really freaking ugly.

24 Stringed Grandfather

2006-06-01T17:51:00.000-07:00

This instrument was built mostly from materials that I recovered from a job site that I was working on. The head stock which is to the right was originally part of a broken mirror frame that I found in the basement of Mitzi's Cafe. I cut it down to fit the width of the instrument, but made no attempt at changing the color of stain. Part of the joy in building these instruments out of garbage and what not, is the challenge of finding different things that work well together; with as few alterations as possible. Other parts of the mirror also went into building the Harp Bass, and Tony's Bass. The idea for building the 24 Stringed Grandfather was loosely based on the hammer dulcimer. What I did with the strings is quite different though. The first eight strings are set up the same as any of the MV series.The next six strings which are all raised up slightly higher are set as individually tuned drone strings, or you could also use a slide. The last eight strings are set up to be played like the Larcksichord, which you can read more about further down the page. In an attempt to waste little of the salvaged materials I use the base was made from the remaining parts of the mirror frame. One of the main problems with this instrument is it's ability to be tuned. The first obvious problem is that half of the tuning pegs actually sit just below the strings, so it can be very difficult, almost to the point of annoying to get your stubby fingers in there. The second problem which is a bit more of a pain is the fact that the wood where the strings are fed into near the head stock sits about an inch and a half lower than the tuning pegs. This causes a lot of tension, and prevents easy movement between the two, therefore making it difficult to get proper tension on the strings. I will be working on this problem soon. How though, I'm not that sure.

The 24 Stringed Grandfather was first shown at Mitzi's Sister in Parkdale. It hung for the month of March 2005.
The show was called Delinquente Strumenti.

Wooden Three Stringed Erhu

2006-06-01T17:50:00.000-07:00

Six Stringed Ban-hu

2006-06-01T17:49:00.001-07:00

Metal Tambura

2006-06-01T17:49:00.000-07:00

Metal Tambura, Metal Tambura. Over, and over again.

This instrument sounds great with a slide and a contact mic. Made from a serving plate I found at the Goodwill, an aluminum tube I cut in half, and various scavenged guitar parts, and my favorite, the salad bowl. Yes sir I love those salad bowls. Really, I love salad bowls for some bizarre reason. I based this instrument completely on the Tambura. The length of the neck was measured out from some schematics I found on the internet, along with the placement, and amount of strings. The bridge placement was measured back from the nut. I don't really know why there are two nuts up there, or if I really did base that on a real Tambura. I could be making all this stuff up. I'm not really all that sure that anybody will even read these things.

The New Larksichord

2006-06-01T17:48:00.001-07:00

I rebuilt this from the old Larksichord when I realized that my wood working skills had most definitely needed some work. I am much happier with this new version.
The wood bridge is place there so you can play either side of the strings, plucking one side while adding pressure to the other side. The bottom part of the Larksichord is equipped with two guitar pick ups. The top half of the instrument is designed to be played acoustically.
Above to the left you can see a close up of the face plate with its two guitar pick ups off set from one another
Below on the far left is a close up of the hand made head stock.
Beside that are the three sound holes on the acoustic side of the Larcksichord.
The Larksichord is made up of:
1 very large old Lark hairdryer
Some kind of large cooking plate
A crumb tray from a stove top element
12 tuning pegs
12 guitar strings
1 completely useless knob which I have no idea why I put it in there.

The Old Larksichord

2006-06-01T17:48:00.000-07:00

photo by iner souster

First shown at the Columbus Centre.
This version of the Larcksichord no longer exists. It was dismantled and rebuilt into the New Larcksichord. My one regret is that I did not put that really cool round metal thing back in the center of the instrument.
As you can see with the Old Larksichord the wood working wasn't as refined. I had yet to discover the brilliance of stain, or what sand paper was for that mater. Funny considering i grew up learning a numerous amount of trade work from my father. Funny haha, or just funny peculiar. i can't tell.

MV1

2006-06-01T17:47:00.000-07:00

This is a photo of the MV1 that I shot at my opening at Mitzi's Sister. Again, one would think that after two years in a intensive photography program at Sheridan Collage that I would be able to take a good photo of some of these beasties. Ah well. Since then the instrument has hung in the Margaret Brewery Gallery of the Harbourfront Center, it was then transported to my local called Mezzrows where it hangs along with a few other instruments behind the band stage.

Another great shot by David Sait of the MV1 taken at the Gladstone. This angle really shows off the claw and glass sphere table leg that tony gave me.
The MV1 actually stands for the name of the instrument that I got the string idea from, but like most things, I just can't remember. One day it will come to me. Hopefully.
Ingredients for the MV1
Scrap wood paneling from a basement I demolished
Six hand carved pegs to hold the strings in the bottom
18 tuning pegs
12 sympathetic strings
4 drone strings
2 main strings I play with a slide and Ebow
1 Hand carved neck made from pine
21 aluminum handmade frets
1 really nice pickup that Alex gave me
1 really nice contact pickup that Brian gave to me
1 three way toggle switch.
A volume and a tone nob
And lastly a really cool table leg that Tony gave me that really just brings the whole instrument together.
Too bad i messed the wiring up and neither of the pick ups work. Now I just play it with a contact mic that gets taped to the bridge. Once I get the MV1 back it will get a good old re-wiring.

View this clip on Vimeo

MV2

2006-06-01T17:46:00.000-07:00

The MV2 is an instrument who construction was inspired by a junked ceiling fan I saw in the garbage one snowy grey afternoon. Not wanting to carry it home in such misserable weather I decided to leave it for the garbageman. All that evening I kept thinking to myself I should have grabbed that peice of junk. Sure enough the next day I was driving down that same street with my boss and I saw one of the fan blades poking through a snow bank. Jules pulled over, I jumped out and threw it into the back of the truck. After work I decided against our ritual post work pint in favour of getting home and peicing together my new find with a not so successful first attempt of rebuilding the MV1 It all came together in one long, but rewarding evening.
The MV2 is constructed of:
1 stailess steel salad bowl
1 brass ceiling fan cover
A crome plated hot and cold shower plate
A handcarved stainless steel fret board (it was my first fret board which took over ten hours to cut and place the frets in)
18 tunning pegs
12 sympathetic strings
4 drone stings
2 open strings
The back of the MV2 is held together by the back of an old chair that Fiddler Tony gave me.
The head was crved out of a peice of scap pine I hade laying around, which was then covered by a metal plate I found on an old sewing machine.

The MV2 was shown at the delinuquente strumenti show in march 2005.

Mathew Cook who shot the photo is now the owner of the MV2

Michael Keith on the Sympathetic Steel With bit of tres Lemon

2006-06-01T17:45:00.001-07:00

Here is a shot from the Gladstone gig of Michael and the Sympathetic Steel.
photo by David Sait

To the right is a shot of David Sait playing the New Larksichord. Below is a shot of me playing the Old Metalore with a pair of chopsticks. These photos were taken at Michaels place as we recorded an album for Tres Lemon. You can find it at Michaels web site or you can visit David's site at http://www.davidsait.com/

Sympathetic Steel

2006-06-01T17:45:00.000-07:00

photo by David Sait

There is a description of the Sympathetic Steel further down the blog. I love this shot taken by my friend David Sait. It was shot one afternoon gig David, Michael and I had at the Gladstone. Sometime the three of us get together, sometimes we don't, but when we do we call ourselves Tres Lemon.
Click on the link below and that will take you to Michael’s web site. There you will see a Tres Lemon album and a link to download an mp3 we recorded. I believe the song is called "Don't touch that, you'll cut yourself"
Alexiteric.com

The Sympathetic Steel was first started some time ago after finding the lovely chrome top of a vacuum cleaner. Originally the hand carved steel fret board was made for this instrument, but after much debate I chose to go with more wood. The top six strings are laid out and tuned like a regular lap steel, with a pickup placed in the centre of the opening in the vacuum. Running under the fret board into the resonance chamber are 19 sympathetic strings that have there own pickup and volume control. The pickups can be used together or separately. Here are two close ups of the vacuum part and the neck. This instrument was also part of the Harbourfront Center show, and now resides along with the MV1 at Mezzrows

Alex Playing His Giant Left Handed Bass

2006-06-01T17:44:00.000-07:00

photo by Ravi Persaud

Photos below by iner souster

Harp Bass and The Eight Stringed Lady

2006-06-01T17:43:00.001-07:00

This is an image of two different instruments. The one on the left is called the Harp Bass. The one on the right is The Eight Stringed Lady, unfortunately this lady doesn't play so well. Now the Harp Bass gets some interesting sounds coming out of it if you place a contact mic on the body. Neither of these instruments have actually been played by me live, but there is a rumor about a drunken drummer banging away at it one night while playing a gig at Mezzrows.
Here is a close up of the Harp Bass. For some reason, even though I went to collage for photography, i can't seem to get a good photo of either of these instruments.

Tony's Bass

2006-06-01T17:43:00.000-07:00

This is called Tony's Bass because he was the one who started building it. When I got my hands on it everything changed. I was in a very contact mic state of mind for a good long while. I figured I could remove the wash tub and turn it into an electric bass. It was a fine idea in theory, only I never really got the chance to put it into practice. It was the last instrument to hang for my show at Mitzi's Sister, and was literally put on the wall as the varnish was drying. By the time I got home (which is only a block away) I had received a phone call saying somebody was interested in purchasing it. That was that.

Here's a nice close up of Tony's Bass. Tony rocks.

Tony's Erhu

2006-06-01T17:42:00.000-07:00

This is an instrument I made for my good friend Tony one year for Christmas. Tony always brings me pleasant musical surprises. Many of the instruments on this page have little pieces of Tony in them. The instrument was based on an ancient Chinese instrument called an Erhu.
That’s where the name comes from. Sometimes I’m not that creative when naming my sculptures. So Tony’s Erhu is what it’s called. I have since built many different pieces with the Erhu design in mind. This was the only one out of the group that actually followed the Erhu principals. Here is a nice photo I took of Tony one late night in my kitchen after many attempts at finding the right kind of beer bottle to use as a slide. Unfortunately we were drinking beer in cans, but that didn’t stop us.
Tony is the fiddle player in a band called The Backstabbers. Just click on there name to check out there web site.

photo by iner souster

Little Wooden Three Stinged Berimbau

2006-06-01T17:41:00.000-07:00

photo by iner souster

The Renaissance Bedpan

2006-06-01T17:40:00.001-07:00

photo by iner souster

Tube Water Fisher

2006-06-01T17:40:00.000-07:00

Metal Erhu1 and 2

2006-06-01T17:39:00.000-07:00

I made both of these instruments not to long after I had built Tony’s Erhu, visually designed on the same principals as a traditional Erhu, there are some differences.
Both of these instruments are about ten inches shorter than Tony’s. On Metal Erhu 1 there is no bridge attached to the face plate On Metal Erhu 2 the bridge consists of to floating beads.
Both use small metal salad bowls as there resonating chamber. Metal Erhu 1 has a neck designed much like the single string series; where as Metal Erhu 2 has a neck much more traditional to the Erhu style.

Two Stringed Golf And Refrigerator Bass

2006-06-01T17:36:00.000-07:00

This was an instrument that I had great fun with for a long time. The Two Stringed Golf and Refrigerator Bass was played many a night during my stay with Manna Machine. It consists of a cut down refrigerator shelf from our fridge. (I never could get the two liter bottles of pop to stand up in there before that). It also has the shaft from one of them there fancy golf ball pick-err-uppers. This is where the two bass strings run through. The body of the bass was built from some metal parts out of my now defunct vacuum cleaner, not to be mistaken for the vacuum of the acoustic suck. There is also a tube running parallel from the golf tube that has a spring running down the center of it. This was great for feed back and real cool twang noises. The stand of the bass is a beer tap from a bar I worked at. I do like the chrome.

Six Stringed Chicken cooker in black and Green

2006-06-01T17:35:00.000-07:00

The Chicken Cooker in Black was first shown at the Columbus Center. The chicken Cooker in Green was first shown at Mitzi's Sister. They are basically wall pieces, but the black one could be pulled off with the use of a slide, or a beer bottle used as a slide after consumption. Most of theses instruments sound great after consumption. It was my first attempt at some form of fretted instrument, but I really didn't know what I was doing back then.

Some times, that can be kind of nice.

photo by iner souster

The Acoustic Suck

2006-06-01T17:34:00.001-07:00

There’s nothing like taking some bodies old vacuum apart and turning it into a musical instrument. Saying that I don’t want you to get the wrong idea and think that this is a glamorous lifestyle. Taking another persons vacuum apart is kind of disgusting, all the little particles of there dead flesh being cakes in there for years. It’s time to move on, and get over the dead flesh.
Anyway, one of the regulars that would come into a bar I worked at the time, brought in this lovely old vacuum for me one night with the intentions of me making an instrument out of it. I looked at it and looked at it for the longest time, when finally it came to me. When was the last time you saw a Koto made from a vacuum cleaner. I bet it’s been quite some time. So off I went. It didn’t really take that much to get it set up dead flesh aside. The biggest problem was cutting the sound holes. That was more time consuming that anything. The post are whip it canisters from Mitzi’s Café (they collect them for me)
And the tuning pegs are just eye screws. All in all it was a relatively simple instrument to build, though I don’t think I will be making another.

David's Bain

2006-06-01T17:34:00.000-07:00

This is one of the older stringed instruments I have built, right along side the six stringed chicken cooker in black in fact. It was my first experience with multiple string tension. I finally understood what that rod did, and having something solid to mount the neck onto would have helped immensely. The body was from an factory light which was roughly thirty inches in diameter. The face plate is another of those round cooking sheets, with a grease catcher from a stove top in the center. The neck was from an old guitar obviously, it was something Jen had given me for Christmas one year. She had given me a few guitar necks, some car horns, and a whole wack of cool instrument building things. I’m the only person I know that gets excited about getting junk for Christmas. So far this really doesn’t have much to do with the instrument. The reason why I call this one David’s Bain is because right before a show a few years ago David was at home trying the impossible, tuning the instrument up. He pulled all the mussels in his lower back trying to reach over the body of the great large beast. The instrument was retired at that point. Not only was it minimally functional, but now it turned out to be dangerous.

photo by iner souster

Metal Berimbau, Mini Single String, Sistrum.

2006-06-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

photo by iner souster

Three Springed Bass

2006-06-01T17:32:00.000-07:00

This was an instrument I built some years ago that had great potential. It all seems to fall apart in the end, maybe I just lost interest when all was said and done. Or maybe I needed the tuning pegs for Alex's Left Handed Bass.
Either way this instrument now only exists in the realm of cyber space. The idea was neat. I had just started working with springs. The Vornado and the many variations of the Sunflowers of Death had some. The Larksichord had a big one running down the center inside the instrument. So you get my point. I was into springs at the time. So a three springed bass is what I made. In the photo the instrument looks kind of neat, but in reality in was not so neat at all. The thing was hacked together. My abilities to manipulate metals had not yet been refined. The springs at best were barely controllable. And, to top it all off, you really couldn't tune the beast. All in all it had to be destroyed. It did get its moment in the sun as a piece in the show I did at the Joseph D. Carrier Gallery in the Columbus Centre.