Here's a prototypal instrument I made long ago that came straight out of Dr. Frankinstien's workshop. It began as an old beat up German violin that was too trashed to restore properly, so I installed a neck-through-the-body slab of Padouk into it, and named it the Mando-Vile. Then, because it was already kind of weird, I took liberties and hacked a cutaway into it, installed joystick controls from an old radio control transmitter, and veneered it with Zebrawood. Then I didn't like the way the Padouk and Zebrawood looked together, so I sprayed the whole thing with transparent red lacquer.

In a blinding flash of inspiration, I realized that the strings between the bridge and the tailpiece ended up being pretty close to being exactly in tune with the normal playing strings, so I designed a new tailpiece so they could be intonated. This idea is why I still keep this mutated excuse for an instrument around with me. The sympathetic aspect of the strings behind the bridge provide rich harmonic overtones and other resonant aspects to the tone that are outstanding to listen to. I'm now taking this approach and plan on building a (properly constructed) archtop guitar, and some other mandolin family instruments.