Violin Forum/Message Board

[actonern]

I've been collecting the Strad posters pretty much since they started producing them. One of the things that fascinates and frustrates me is the amazing variability of plate thicknesses that appear capable of producing world class fiddles.

I know that different wood densities and archings argue for different thicknesses to produce a theoretically correct interplay of tap tones between top and back plates.

But it seems in many cases that these venerated makers were almost haphazard in their tolerances when working. Forget 1/10 mm dial caliper accuracy - in many cases the variations are millimeters out of "harmony." In many cases there appear to be local dips and valleys within the plate that are out of synch with any apparent graduation intent.

And yet they sound so good!

I guess I'm just wondering alout whether the modern focus on precision is all that important in engineering good instruments when working our plates.

Any thoughts?

Best regards

[Michael Darnton]

I think the type of precision you're talking about is counterproductive. They obviously did not think it was important. I do graduation using the same tools they used, and get about the same numbers. My experience has been that too much attention in this area consistently results in tonally boring instruments. There are lots of examples of this, not only from my own making.

[actonern]

Thank you Michael... your voice of experience means a lot. I take it you don't hold at all with the view that these "hills and valleys" were the result of some wonderfully sophisticated tuning process... like this sample text from Keith Hill's website (do disrespect to Hill)...



"When you tune the wood in any given area on your violin plates, tune each annular ring. To do this, you will require a scraper of small size. Do the tapping with the edge of the scraper. Listen only to the click of the scraper as it hits the wood surface. The frequency of this click is a fifth above the fundamental pitch of that area, an octave up. The scraping sound is also the same pitch as the click, but a bit more difficult to focus on. Tune each ring along its entire length within a given area.

The reason for tuning each ring is that no two rings are alike. Differences in ring density will necessitate differences in wood thickness for the rings. You can circumvent this by selecting wood for homogeneity between the winter rings. Good Luck! I have only found one or two pieces of wood that were homogeneous between the winter rings which I thought would yield a resilient sound; most were too punky. I like resilience more than I like homogeneity of growth. If you do too, then leave the harder rings thin and the softer rings thick."

[Michael Darnton]

No, I think that attitude is, frankly, ridiculous and, incidentally, historically ignorant. Look at how many (most, that is) great violins have had edges replaced, patches and cleats added, often over a very large percentage of their internal surface, and maintain their status and quality, but most certainly none of their "original tuning", if there had been any. And that doesn't even consider how many, especially the greatest of all, del Gesus, have been regraduated. If the only tool you own is a hammer, all problems become nails, and in today's violin making world, the only tool many makers have is technology.

If you want to consider graduation, there are some more interesting things to be derived by running statistics on the grads of large numbers of instruments OF THE SAME TYPE AND MAKE (every study of this type that I've seen has negated its value by combining instruments and makers that don't belong together), which would enable you to see trends that indicate individual makers' (all Cremonese makers, for instance, do not do the same thing) graduation philosophies, and you can dodge a lot of bullets by knowing that, but in my opinion graduation is not a magic bullet, it's simply one that you can use to shoot yourself if you point it in the wrong direction, as the late 1800s French makers did in many instances with their non-traditional idea of centering thickness near the soundpost, resulting in that nasty "French" sound no one wants to buy and that Vuillaume, who followed the Stradivari pattern, avoided.

It's not something I talk much about, but I did once do such an analysis of around 40 Strad backs and learned something intellectually interesting, though not absolutely necessary for making a violin, that resulted in changing my whole idea about how violins had been designed. Someone who's done much better in that direction than I did with my tiny project is Francois Denis, whose work is well worth following, in my opinion. If there's a secret, it is not, in my opinion, technology which they didn't have in 1600, but math, which they did have.

When you look at Denis' concepts and realize that both the violin and music are expressions of simple proportional math in nearly exactly the same way, and that music is the direct result of definite physical proportions in the material realm (not only in the strings, but in the wood that amplifies the strings), things get interesting and a lot less mysterious.

[jessupe goldastini]

i use no measureing devices at all...

i have a digital caliper....but i only use it to spot check and make sure i do'nt go too thin in areas...

i do use a sound post gauge...

and a neck jig

but other than that....all i need to know is 7 degrees on the neck block...

over thinking,over analyzing separates the body from the mind, withers intuition...

10 violins and one guitar, in less than one year, and they all sound good, i think i must be doing somethng right....ah yes i know.....not thinking about it at all....just doing it all by eye....the best measureng device there is

[jethro]

I think the last thing I want to build is something that when played is
underwhelming and forgettable ! I yurn to build an instrument that
makes the player angry that he THOUGHT his present instrument was
a quality instrument ! It seems like the more I play and experiment
with setup details the more it seems like there are fewer and fewer
commercial instruments that sound and feel Good ! I hope this is
that I am making my senses more refined to what sounds and feels good
and desireable. Do you all have any opinions how you would describe
the sound of "boreing" ????? I am immagineing a monocromatic
sine wave type sound would be boreing ..... like an old 70's electronic
synthisyser sound.
I'm just throwing this bait out to troll the waters of opinion !

Tim

[jessupe goldastini]

jethro......

allthough i have not been doing this that long , compared to many here...

i do have the fortune to be around and exposed to many fine instruments...

there is one qaulity that ALL good instruments have regarding tone and sound....

you feel it in your heart....

no i don't mean that in the "touchy feely" way...i mean physically...

if you have ever been to a rock concert and stood near the bass speakers, you get that subsonic "thud" that you literally feel pass through your body, particularly in your chest cavity, to the point that it feels lke its throwing off your heart beat rythm....

great violins have that qaulity, when played the deep resonant qaulity should penatrate into you...great players inturn will be able to make you "feel" the music with such instruments

and all the other tone discriptions that go along with a particular violin are fringe discriptors that must accompany this resonant qaulity

elsewise you have an average instrument...so instead of describing what is not good....as theres lots of that...seek chest thud

as i've found its very easy to make a loud brite violins...to get that chest thud not so easy