A Vulcan harp, or lyre, from Star Trek TOS that I made for a friend who is a super fan. LR2 cut out the body, the electronics pocket on the back and the back cover/speaker holes. The wood is, I believe, Butternut (White Walnut) from a wind felled tree on my property. The soundboard has a veneer of walnut.
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That looks great!
That looks very professional. How well does it sound? Does it actually play from the strings, or do you just play music from an mp3/speaker?
Let’s just say, as an instrument, it makes a pretty good prop! It was clearly designed for TV. I can get some sound out of the strings, but it would be a beast to try to play musically. There are 19 strings, supposedly tuned chromatically, and they’re awkwardly close together.
Fortunately, my friend is not a musician. I will tune it a bit, without stressing it too much, and hand it over. The buttons on the front control an Arduino which makes user selectable drone notes. I managed to find the original top octave generator chip that was reportedly used in one of the playable props, and worked for a while on a circuit for that, but eventually decided it wasn’t worth it - so back to the trusty Arduino.
The harp will hang on a wall, I’m sure. And that’s fine. It complements this - which I built for him about 6 years ago. What I would have given to have had a CNC then…
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