The electric violin projects began with a request from my friend Chris, who is an amazing classically trained viola player for a 5-stringed electric viola he could play in his hard rock string quartet covers band 'Fourplay'. We designed and made together a too heavy but decent sounding stick...and I still had a wedge shaped piece of ebony left over that I could just make a violin fretboard out of ...and I needed something to do with a lovely lump of spanish cedar that came from the neck cut for a flamenco guitar. ... So the electric 5 string violin was conceived. The other half of the cypress became a four string electric violin. Another two are planned. I have a pickup for each from Ashworth electronics. I used Schaller mini machine heads for the 5-string. The 4-string has a couple of salvaged guitar machine heads in place. I am currently working on the chin rest and wiring and going through testing - thanks Cai.