Short for the Yamaha Eletric Violin, the YEV explores a fundamental truth of electric instruments… and that is that electric instruments don’t need to worry about sound acoustics. A guitar is shaped the way it’s shaped so that air can vibrate in its hollow body. A drum too. Even a saxophone. But when you look at the electric versions of these instruments, you don’t need to worry about resonance, vibrations, and acoustics. That’s why an electric guitar is thinner and doesn’t have a hole. Electric drums are just literally tiles that you strike a drumstick against… and the YEV, just like with other electric instruments, doesn’t need to worry about hollow spaces and sound vibrations. However, what the YEV does with this liberation-from-volume is rather interesting, in that the violin is designed to be completely skeletal.
Looking at the YEV’s body, it’s easy to tell that it’s a violin, but I guess you’d spend a good 10 seconds marveling exactly how it treats surfaces and volumes… or in other words, how it looks. With an extremely streamlined body that houses all the electronics, the YEV comes with a relatively violin-esque silhouette, thanks to a curved wooden veneer that gives the violin its definition. The veneer also interestingly makes the YEV see-through, because the product doesn’t have a front or back, making for a very interesting performance, which is honestly what this violin is all about!
The YEV Electric Violin is a winner of the Design Intelligence Award for the year 2018.
Designer: Yamaha
