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Styrofoam, who've thought!

http://deredactie.be/cm/vrtnieuws.english/News/1.2362321?playlist=7.39638

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.

I think I need some more details...

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Styrofoam (EPS) is a natural amplifier. To see this for yourself, take a piece of music wire and tap it on a table top.

Then, push the wire into a block of Styrofoam and tap the wire again on the table top. It will be much louder.

Technically, styrofoam is the open cell green foam used by florists. The white foam he used is expanded bead polystyrene foam (EPS) which is the same stuff used for disposable coffee cups and ice coolers.

It must be braced in someway? It looks like it has a narrow wood top with foam "wings. I love this kind of thing. Wish they had given a longer sound clip.

Thinking about it, the stiffness to weight ratio of that white foam is pretty incredible

That's crazy. Bet u couldn't build a steel string that way.

This styrofoam cello was developed by Tim Duerinck, a musical instrument manufacturing student at the College of Ghent (Belgium). For those who read Dutch, his complete master thesis describing the development of the instrument can be found at : http://www.scriptiebank.be/sites/defaul ... nten_0.pdf
Dimensions :
Length 760 mm
Upper bout 372 mm
Waist 222 mm
Lower bout 460 mm
Depth 116 / 119 mm
Materials / construction :
Back, sides and neck : sycamore maple
Bridge : European larch
Top : 15 mm styrofoam 15 kg/m^3 reinforced by a 120 mm wide, 1 mm thick veneer strake (European larch) on both sides running over the full length of the instrument body. An extra reinforcement by a 1 mm carbon plate of 120 x 90 mm was glued onto the veneer both on the in- and outside i.w.o. the bridge.
The height of the 11 / 12 mm bass bar, nor the dimensions of the soundpost are given. Their position is described as “standard” (bass bar under bass side bridge foot, soundpost under treble side bridge foot)
The strings make an angle of 154 degr. over the bridge, thus exerting a load to the top of the cello which is said to vary depending on the brand and type of strings, from 417 to 507 N. Roughly twice as high as from a floating bridge on a guitar top. Since the styrofoam cello apparently sounds much louder than a traditional one, it seems worthwile to experiment with styrofoam guitar tops as well !

Wow, yeah, who woulda thunk?

How much do you bet?