Hawkwood Fydell - Medieval Hardanger Fiddle Hybrid

I built this instrument in 2010 as the prototype for a range of drone fiddles I'd been planning for some time.  It's design was a variant of the traditional medieval vielle with elements of the norwegian hardanger incorporated. It has a solid slightly arched spruce top, american walnut sides, a flat back made of oak and walnut and a beech neck and pegbox. The internal braces were spruce. The fingerboard and tailpiece were mahoghany and the tuning pegs hand carved from mahogany and oak. A number of the original medieval vielles came highly decorated with egg tempera paintings, so in keeping with this I added a small amount of hand painted illumination  to this instrument in ink and oil paints. The whole instrument was finished with beeswax rubbed down for a traditional aged and worn appearance, with occasional nicks and marks in the wood added for character.

It has a 13inch scale length and  three melody strings, usually tuned DAE as on the top three strings of a normal violin, or also DAD. These strings are all gut core for a traditional early sound, the D and A being Pirastro Hardanger strings, and the E being a plain gut Pirastro Chorda. Vielles often had extra bourdon or drone strings, usually running alongside the fingerboard, but on this instrument I made a slight departure and added two Hardanger fiddle style sympathetic strings which run under the fingerboard and over a specially adapted nut at the pegbox. These strings are plain steel, and usually tuned to AE or DA. They add an attractive ringing effect to the fiddle's sound, especially good for bagpipe tunes. To further aid drone playing the fingerboard and maple bridge have a flatter radius of 60 degrees instead of the usual 48 degrees on a normal violin. The fingerboard is also shorter as the instrument is mainly played in the first or second positions.

The instrument has a spruce sound post(not found in many original vielles but for volume and tone I chose to add one here)  and a spruce bass bar. The bass bar is shorter than in a modern violin, which gives this instrument a raspier, more hollow low end.

The sound is a little different than a normal fiddle, but then it isn't a normal fiddle. It's primarily designed for droning trance like tunes, but you can play a range of irish, scottish and old time tunes on it and it handles them nicely. It can be played with a normal bow but because of the wider, flatter middle works very well with a baroque bow. I make my own simple bent stick bows from willow which works surprisingly well also.

This particular instrument is sold, but if you are interested you can a comission a similar one. Decoration is optional, just email me for details at joelmerriner@hotmail.com