Experimental Electroacoustic Instrument / Modular Casing Hybrid

Meet the newest thing I built. Originally I just wanted to make a casing for my Koma Elektronik Field Kit and some eurorack modules. Well, „originally“. After I built it, I realized it sounded good as an instrument body, so I had the idea for this not only to be a modular electronic instrument, but also a modular acoustic instrument, with different „acoustic modules“ (pieces of wood with attached sounding objects such as springs or tines) that can be fastened to the surface of the casing.

What you can see on top of the box is the first „acoustic module“ I built. It has two stings, one runs over a flexible neck (which is great for pitch bending), is mic’ed with a small homemade electric pickup and has a stand for an ebow; the other string runs over a vertical piece of metal (which is also cool for pitchbending) that divides it into two playable segments that influence each other.
Then there‘s the solenoid. A solenoid is basically an electric motor that goes back and forth instead of round and round. I trigger it with the Koma Field Kit. When I give the solenoid a little juice, it moves gently back and forth, when I give it a lot of it, it hits the string. I can change the position where it hits the string a bit since the solenoid is fastened with some elastic band that allows me to change its orientation within a certain range.
Also on this „module“, there is kalimba tines made from springy steel pieces I found on the street (they‘re from the brushes of street cleaning vehicles, so you can find them anywhere where those are used). As you can see, some of the tines have small magnets on them, which allows me to tune them freely (by moving the magnets up or down or adding more magnets for weight) without having to turn any screws.
On the back end there‘s two output jack sockets, one for the electric pickup and one for an integrated piezo contact microphone.

The sound in the video has no effects except some distortion from overdriving the Field Kit's inputs. The thing I'm holding in my hand at the end of the video is the "magnetic bow" I made, see my other uploads for some more info on that. Also check out my instagram (@aaronkarnov) for some more pictures and videos.