2021 Wildwood Fretted Electric Beercan Fiddle

What even is this, right? Am I just wasting time? Maybe. Sometimes you have to waste to make the brain happy, though. I've wanted to make something like this for more than a year and a half and with all of the hectic-ness going on in the shop these days, I really needed to take the time to do another Jake project before getting back to the fray.

Anyway, it resembles a Chinese erhu in a way -- two strings and spindly neck -- but it's got a 16 3/4" scale length and it's fretted. The '70s beer can is salvage from the shop (thanks, Anders!) and serves as a resonant body to stick my single-sensor K&K acoustic pickup to so we can get some sound out of it. Acoustically you can hear it but it's pretty quiet.

Tuning is DA low to high in the same pitch as mandolin or violin's middle two courses or viola's higher two, using normal guitar plain 13 and 9 strings.

The actual inspiration is from those odd, fretted, one-string resonator Stroh "violins" from the 1910s and 1920s. But why use a beercan? Because it's funny, of course! The tuners, though, are a little higher-tech -- they're 4:1 geared Pegheds tuners left-over from installing a set and a half in an old guitar.

I kept this bare-bones so there's not even finish on the neck... plus that'll "age-it-up" nicely on the quick.