About the "Electric Viola"
Inspired by Terry Gilliam's cut-and-paste-image animation for Monty Python, I made a few images of my own, such as this "electric viola".
Starting with a photograph of a viola as the foundation, I took another photograph, this time of a Gretsch Tennessean guitar, and after carefully resizing the copy, used an exacto blade to cut out the toggle switch, volume dial, output jack and whammy bar. I then taped these bits onto the body of the viola to make it look like it had been modified to be an electric instrument.
The image may look cool and is intended to provide some insight into the diversity of my musical interests, but ultimately, is a joke:
If one were to actually build something like this for real, using the whammy bar, especially on a "dive down", would cause the strings to go slack and the bridge, held in place by the tension of the strings, would collapse, making the instrument immediately unplayable.
And, sure, there are amplified arco strings, but a toggle switch which indicates multiple pickups? C'mon!