A headless chest-worn 5-string electric viola, inspired by the design of the Mark Wood Violins Viper, with strandberg guitar tuners on the custom-designed tailpiece and locking hinges on the wings for additional adjustability.

October 23, 2022, my son, Nate Dickson, professional musician, located in Madison, Wisconsin approached me with the idea of creating an imitation, the sincerest form of flattery, of the Mark Wood Viper, with the tuners on the tailpiece for better balance. I started studying the Mark Wood Viper from the pictures and videos posted on-line. As nothing on the instrument is square, I mocked-up a model out of cedar wood. Because I had no precise measurement of the angles, I decided to use locking hinges for adjustment of the wings. A little over 5 months later, I flew from Coastal Mendocino County, California to Madison, Wisconsin to deliver the first prototype. The instrument began with the locking ball joint for the paddle and an off-the-shelf 4/4 Stradivarius standard 5-string student-quality violin neck and fingerboard. It is a big instrument -- 16.5 inch string vibrating length. And the Mark Wood-styled angled tailpiece requires extra-long viola and 1/8-scale cello strings. After placing the neck and bridge on the body, it was obvious that the off-the-shelf fingerboard was not wide enough. I built a CAD model (STL file) of the fingerboard of the correct specifications and had it 3-D printed in Nylon at Shapeways. I have had a love for musical instrument making, specifically violin making since the 1980s. Even though this was just a prototype, I could not resist adding a piece of black walnut on the end of the chopped-off pegbox and plastic panels on the wings with snakeskin textured surface. Just the still pictures of the finished prototype have received good response on social media. The name, "Gaboon Vampire" (an oblique reference to the Viper) was an answer Soupy Sales gave to some question on "To Tell the Truth" in the 1960s. Nat, the luthier at Taft Violins in Madison and my son, Nate both like the sound of the instrument, which has basically a makerspace-style cigar-box guitar transducer. I think the difference is that it is well attached to a high-quality 5-string viola bridge.