My most inspirational instrument, to date, would have to be the one that started me off, my lyre. I made my lyre at a weekend lyre making workshop.
The lyre is made of Sheoak, a truly wonderful Western Australian hardwood, with a cedar soundboard.
It has 13 steel strings, from D up to B. I have tuned it to the key of D (tuned F up to F# and C up to C#) so that I can easily switch from my lyre to my tin whistle.
This is my doodle-bass.
It's a practice bass with a 40inch string length.
It's made from a cookie tin and the strings are whipper-stripper line.
I got the idea (and instructions) from Dennis Havlena's web page. Dennis has a web site cram packed with interesting home made instruments.
These are stave constructed drums, modeled after African hand drums – Ashiko's and Djembe's. For more information, see my Constructing Stave Drums (Ashiko and Djembe) pages.
This is my cardboard Kora. The Kora is a uniquely West Aftrican harp-like instrument. A real Kora uses a large gourd for a resonator, and animal skin (probably goat) for the soundboard.
I got the idea for this instrument from Dennis Havlena's web page. Dennis had plans for a cookie-tin Kora, but I couldn't find a cookie tin that was the right size, and I had all these sonotubes (construction grade cardboard tubes) laying around.
So, I made the resonator from the cardboard tube, the outer protective layer stripped away to expose the raw cardboard, which was then varnished to give a neutral/natural finish.The Kora has 21 strings, 10 on the right and 11 on the left. The strings are whipper-snipper line (purple) and monofilament fishing line (clear). The strings are aligned in two planes, on either side of the rather unusual bridge.
The instrument is not easy to play, but does produce beautiful sounds. My cardboard kora is not a loud as a real kora (which is probably a good thing :-) but is a lot of fun to try to play.
It can be a challenge to keep in tune though. With 21 strings, tuning some of the lower stings inevitably changes the tension on the higher strings, requiringfurther tuning.