Cybertwee Electric Baroque Lute (20 strings)

As a Luthier I have always loved to modernize old instruments and have made a few electric lutes. This was the first I designed for 3d printing. My first test print was in PLA and unfortunately bent too much to support good play but with a stronger material and stronger support rods it might hold up.

The body has 3 threaded rods compressing the entire instrument together (M8 & 2x-M6) There are also M4 and M1 bolts holding the body and faces together

There are 2 single strings and 18 doubled strings. The tuning from lowest to highest is

C,c,D,d,E,e,F,f,G,g,A,a,d,d,f,f,a,a,d',f'

It can be printed on a Prusa Mk3 but the biggest pieces are tricky, see the 3mf file for the exact rotation that fits and print it without a perimeter skirt.

Assembly

Build up the entire instrument on the central threaded rod, starting from the lute's nut. Then push the other two rods through for stability at the end.

Use nuts on the rods to adjust the position of the bridge

To make it electric it takes two flat bar piezo pickups intended to sit under acoustic guitar bridge-nuts.

Update

June 2025: I fixed the headstock which had an export error and added missing frets to Frets.3mf