Wind control

My modified Steiner Midi EVI.

As I played the clarinet during my schooldays, I have been less than satisfied with keyboards as the only means to play tunes on a synth. There have been a few wind controllers on the market over the years, but they have never made a larger impact in the synth market. 
Years ago I took piano lessons, to be able to play keyboards, but I found out that I didn't like playing keyboards that much. I also missed the expression you can achieve with a wind instument. 
I did quite a lot of research and scetches for designing my own wind controller, especially after I discovered Ian Fritz' excellent site. But I realized that I wouldn't really have time to design and build my own wind controller. Therefore I ordered the Midi EVI from inventor Nyle Steiner. He builds them by hand, to order, so they are almost home-built, just not in my home!
Anyway, after a full year's wait, my EVI arrived. 
It soon became clear that the ergonomics of the Midi EVI leaves a lot to be desired. It's not just uncomfortable to play, but also there are no well defined position for the hands. This makes the learning more difficult, as a certain hand or finger movement either hits or misses the notes, depending of how you hold the thing.
So, the goal of my modifications was twofold: first, make the hand positions clearly defined and second, make it comfortable to play for longer sessions.
To fix the hand position on the canister I decided to add a support that causes the instrument to rest in the V between the thumb and the index finger. This is the wooden part that you see in the picture above.

Here you see how the EVI now rests in the V between the thumb and the index finger. 

This improved things a lot, but another problem was that the pinky had no support. I added some wood to the other side of the canister and a piece of brass sheet which, prevents the pinky from going "over the edge". 

Note the wood block and the brass that keep the pinky in place. 

The main hand comfort problem is the shape of the canister. It is cylindrical, but to feel comfortable for the hand, it should me more spherical (ball-shaped). This is especially important for the area where the fingers rest on the canister. I added material by mixing baking powder and cyano acrylate. Then I filed it to a round and smooth shape.

The white area on the right side of the canister is material added to make the canister more ball-shaped. 

Another comfort problem was that I had to turn the wrist to an unnatural position to reach the upper octaves. This was remedied by moving the studs for the rollers one position to the left. I just had to remove the rightmost stud and drill a new hole to the left of the leftmost stud. I then moved the wiring one stud to the left.
Actually I made new, thinner studs so I could fit smaller diameter rollers. I find this reduces the tendency to overshoot when changing octave quickly.

I also made the canister a little more ball shaped where the thumb rests. Note the small screw head just over the white area. It's the earth point that must make contact with the hand. In this position it will do so automatically. You never have to think about it.
Note the thinner rollers and that they are moved one position to the right in the picture. I had to file away a little from the 4th ring to prevent the thumb from touching it.

The last problem that I decided to fix whas the position of the "valves" They needed to be moved towards the middle of the instrument. Unfortuanately the nut between two of the valves prevented me to move them as far as I wanted. This nut is fixed in the circuit board and when you touch it, it activates some chord feature. This feature tended to be accidentally activated all the time, which made my monophonic synth sound weird. Therefore I "disarmed" it with a piece of masking tape. I don't use the chord feature anyway.

I moved the valves and the trill keys as far away from the edge as I could. Note that they are not in line anymore, but follow the length of the fingers.