Daxophone
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| Classification | Idiophone |
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| Hornbostel–Sachs classification | 132.1 (Friction idiophone with individual plaque (electric)) |
| Inventor(s) | Hans Reichel |
| Developed | 1980s |
| Timbre | Animal-like, vocal |
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The daxophone, invented by Hans Reichel (1949–2011), is an electric wooden experimental musical instrument of the friction idiophones category.
The dax in daxophone is derived from the German word Dachs, meaning "badger" and referencing the many animal sounds that the daxophone is capable of generating, changed to dax so that the instrument name echoes Adolphe Sax's saxophone.
The first usage of the daxophone in a musical work was the release of Hans Reichel's album The Dawn of Dachsman in 1987. Even with Hans Reichel's second album featuring the daxophone, Shanghaied on Tor Road: The World's 1st Operetta Performed on Nothing but the Daxophone, the instrument had remained very obscure. It was not until after his release of Yuxo: A New Daxophone Operetta that the daxophone began to gain notability through the internet, spawning YouTube videos and inspiring other artists such as Michael Hearst to create their own albums featuring the daxophone. Even today, the daxophone remains fairly obscure, and as such it has not been mass-produced, requiring any aspiring daxophonists to build their own. Luthier Yuri Landman has designed a simple to build Daxophone for DIY workshops he regularly gives throughout Europe on academies, art spaces and festivals where participants build their own rudimentary version.
The daxophone consists of a wooden piece called a tongue, approximately 330 mm in length, 30 mm in width, and 5 mm in height, and fixed to a wooden block (often attached to a tripod, but also clamped to a table top), which holds one or more contact microphones. This wooden block has a cavity which is carved with a chisel for the insertion of two contact microphones, and a snakewood soundboard laid on top with the contact microphones glued to it. A wide range of voice-like timbres can be produced, depending on the shape of the tongue and the type of wood. The tongue shape is made with a bandsaw or jigsaw. Denser woods such as ebony and oak produce a mellower sound than light woods. These sounds are notable for their comical, often human sounds.
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