It's "Foolestroupe" with an 'e' Google 'Fooles Troupe Home Page'...


I'm no real expert, but I do get occasional 'flashes of inspiration' ...

I haven't really thought about your 'Magic Stick' - God knows, at my age, I have enough trouble with mine ... :-P

But with your Magic Stick™ you seem to have created an instrument similar to the Shamisen, or similar construction. If the 'string' has sufficient tension, it can create an appreciable degree of sound, even without any attachment of a resonator. There's a North American Indian instrument of a hunting bow and a gourd, but you can get quite a degree of volume out of just plucking the bow.

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I did actually many years ago, study one of our tea chests rather intently, and put a lot of thought into it, but I never did anything physical with it (ooo, er ...)...

I did think about doing what you did with the string mounting point. I also thought about whether one should use the exact center of the panels for the mounting point, or somewhere else. It probably should be between there and the points where you get a 'node point' of an overtone of the full length of the height of the side. One even thought about 'The Golden Ratio', and all that esoteric nonsense ...

Then I said stuff it! At Bass frequencies, we are talking wavelengths of meters! (200 Hz -> ~ 1.72 m) and the damn box is only about a meter or so high! So the best place would then be of course, right in the middle, where you instinctively placed it! Would give the most 'throb' for the least 'thump', most efficient, and least 'energy loss' ... :-)

As to your question of putting the lid back on the top, and cutting a hole, etc, I don't really have the experience to say much. I'm not sure that it would do much though. Maybe sealing the whole box and attaching the lid to the bottom where the top panel is excited using the traditional construction method might do something, but I think the slight leakage or having an edge lifted may do more in transferring the energy efficiently - if bass ports get too large, they don't have enough 'impedance' to do the loading sufficiently, I suspect.

One thing from loudspeaker design I thought you might want to play with is if you stuff the box full of the sound deadener filling, but I suspect that since you are not using a 'loudspeaker driver' with maybe hundreds of watts of power, but just a plucked string, is that that idea robs lots of power to stop internal reflections, and that is not what you want in a hand plucked instrument!

I think your cross string design is about as far as you can go in that line. The ply sides are not really all that great.

The drum head, is of course a different matter, as it is thinner and DESIGNED to vibrate efficiently... so there is less energy loss compare with the ply.