I made this last year for my daughter's Orchestra Banquet. The neck is not edible. It is a raw wood piece that I bought on eBay. I coated it with candy melts. I attached the ends of the strings with candy melts to small pieces of spaghetti. Attached one end to the candy melt coated neck, pulled them taught and stuck the spaghetti into the cake. You can see part of the spaghetti sticking out. I cut it off when we got to the venue. It worked beautifully! I was so happy with this cake and everyone loved it. I am making another one this year and have used candy melts and mold material I bought at Hobby Lobby to mold the scroll part of the neck .