My silent F-F-Fiddle alongside its newest compadre — a lulzbot-colored Modular Fiddle. Both were designed by the brilliant Dave Perry.

Obviously, I've become a huge fan of Dave Perry’s work. Pictured here are the first and most recent of his fiddles I’ve printed. I printed the first — his electric F-F-Fiddle — to take advantage of its unamplified nature. (If you’ve ever heard someone new to violin practicing, you’ll understand my motivation.) After the success of that fiddle, I printed one for our violin teacher and, recently, another for a friend whose son is also taking Suzuki lessons. (Needless to say, Christmas will also be covered this year.)

One of the coolest aspects of Suzuki is that parents learn to play right alongside their kiddos. (This is especially nice for parents, like myself, who regret having never mastered an instrument as a kid.) Renting a pair of violins can be pricey, so the ability to print one or both (the second a scaled-down version) is fantastic!

The ability to scale the size of the violin to fit the student is a great feature for parents. It could also be nice for teachers who would like to provide instruments for their students. It also might be interesting to leverage the modular fiddle’s ability to mix and match colors as an incentive to young students to stick with this difficult instrument. Perhaps it could be used like the belt system in many martial arts to indicate the rank (or simply age) of the musician. (E.g. “Stick with it Timmy; you’re almost a red fiddle with blue and white tips!”)

In any case, this modular acoustic fiddle is the fourth of Dave Perry’s design I’ve printed. Like the first, I printed it in black and Lulzbot green to honor our hard-working Taz 6.