Savart’s Wheel, designed by Bart Hopkin, is widely acclaimed for the fact that it makes the most obtrusive, obnoxious and irritating sound ever known. The instrument is made up of a series of disks of graduated size mounted on a motorized spindle. The exposed outer edge of each disk is lined with ridged material, with ridges spaced about 1/8 inch apart.
With the spindle rotating, the player holds a sort of plectrum against the ridges as they rotate past, resulting in some number of ridge-bumps against the plectrum per second. That frequency is the frequency you hear; it is what provides the pitch. For each differently sized disk, the ridges agitate the plectrum at a different frequency (the larger the disk, the more ridges go by per second), and so the instrument is capable of playing clear melodies.
The plectrum piece is attached to a styrofoam cup. This provides a larger, lightweight surface which acts as a soundboard, projecting the vibration that the plectrum experiences out into the air. In the photo, the plectrum / soundboard pieces (there are two of them) are seen lying in front of the main instrument.
The sound? Imagine the mating call of the chupacabra! Hear a sample of Hopkin’s hilarious cover of Howlin’ Wolf’s “Baby Please Don’t Go.”
This is one of the instruments featured in the CD Instrumentarium Hopkinis: Bart Hopkin Plays Invented Instruments. (Shane gives this cd 5 out of 5 stars… mandatory for any experimental instrumentalist)
I begged Bart Hopkin to record a Christmas album on the Savert’s Wheel. He declined.
