Violin Forum/Message Board

[John Cadd]

Let me start here by apologising for being cheeky .I am going progressively more deaf by the week so it`s all academic in a way . So that`s cheeky . But looking at Strad 300 years ago can we imagine what would seem intuitive for him about vibrations and wood .What could he observe for himself ? How did his violins depart from his teacher Amati . What was that sequence of changes ? Mostly we hear objections if we take one good example. Then we hear objections if we try to average out the differences with more than one .
Either way ,if a proper full scale war breaks out we will all be gone inside an hour . It used to be 5 minutes. That was in my era . A sad sobering thought . A new way to end posts ." Let`s all be friends in case we don`t make it through the next hour " .

[Michael Darnton]

What would have been his first concern? I'm betting it would have been to please and honor God. I think that's exactly as far as his interest in non-dimensional aspects went.

After that, it's obvious to me that both he and del Gesu started out by emulating their immediate predecessor/s then started playing around more or less successfully, mostly with arching, drawing on various aesthetics and previous examples, getting new ideas, trying them out, rejecting them, not in an organized manner..

I say arching because almost all of del Gesu's violins can be made on the same form, and Strad was using all of his previous forms near the end of his life, so I guess he decided they were all OK for the job.

Over time, Strad's average top stayed the same thickness, where the backs got progressively thinner at the rate of 1/64" per decade (figures from the Hill book). With dG it's not as clear since many appear to have been regraduated.

F-holes-- aesthetics changed, but not overall dimensions in any meaningful way.

Notable to me is that regarding arching both makers ended up with a version of c1615 Brothers Amati, which is still one of the all-time greats by any measure. There's a lesson there.
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my work sites: http://darntonviolins.com and http://darntonhersh.com

[John Cadd]

Two images of violins popped up in the last two days One was a player testing a Montagnana violin and today a Strad poster advert for the Strad Wilmotte violin. What I noticed about the Montagnana reflections and side views was how suddenly the long arch near the neck dipped down . But on the Wilmotte diagram the long arch stays really full as close to the neck as possible. That contrast is enough to confuse us . Also the Montagnana arching (only going by the way the violin was being moved and turned ) the central belly area runs towards the neck to form a kind of shell shape instead of relaxing to blend to the outline shape. Quite a marked divergence in making style . Even though conclusions cannot easily be drawn , the subject has an eternal fascination .

[Michael Darnton]

In a very general way I'd expect the Montagnana to have a puffier arch--staying high farther out towards the edges, then plunging rapidly into what would appear to be a deeper scoop. That's because the Venetian makers were more closely connected with what was going on in Germany, and many Venetian models are more or less direct Stainer copies. Montagnana makes a model that's more Cremonese as well, but it still retains more of the Stainer look to it.

Have you looked on youtube for clips of people playing Stainer violins? You might like them. They often have a prettier sound, and you might not notice or care about the limited tonal variation they sometimes have.
_________________
new blog at my site! http://darntonviolins.com/blog
my work sites: http://darntonviolins.com and http://darntonhersh.com

[John Cadd]

I will search for Stainers . My bookmarks system finds things one day and loses them the next . A nice description of making styles blending together .

[John Cadd]

I forgot my password before arriving today . I was looking to see if my blog from Violinist .com was on the internet .
The blog is called "A Visual Guide to Scales and Keys ". I was surprised to see it all across the Google screen . Well done Google.
I thought I would mention that here as I found the layout of information helped me to play . There is also a version for guitars .(All my own work ,Honest ).
-----Note how the Music Stave has been fused together with the Fingerboard . Two for the price of one ------
The topic about Control of Interference collected some irrelevant material late on that seemed very pointless . So I have put in something useful here instead .

[John Cadd]

I have a classic case of Interference which comes from a classical Guitar . The guitar I bought was literally falling to bits but I glued it all back together without altering anything . The problem it had was Dud Notes . The cause of these Dud Notes was the way the top and back plates were tuned at the same frequency. My crude untutored experiment was to add some Bluetack to the top of the guitar bridge. Purely guessing the weight I simply added more until the dud notes began to resonate . Making a list of the dud notes and sticking paper tape squares in each fret space clarified where notes occurred.
The notes were spread across 5 different strings but they were basically the same notes or octaves of the note. More bluetack was needed for notes further from the bridge. I was advised that the extra bridge weight would detract from the volume. I did not find that to be true . Most interesting was that as the dud notes that began to resonate , the adjacent notes became richer and more complex . It was not a mere subjective illusion . Any doubt could be double checked by removing the bluetack weight to switch straight back to the original situation . When I say adjacent notes to the duds I mean "about" 3 notes either side (above and below that fret). So for 5 dud notes I had substituted 5 Dud Notes with 5 groups of improved notes .3 notes either side plus one dud equals 7 . 5x7equals 35.
An important point was a dud note can land at the 12 th fret which means the octave harmonic will never play .
In the back of my mind was the comment in the Heron Allen book where he warns against top and back being tuned to the same note . Not everything H.A said was completely wrong . But if any maker wants to think about plate tuning ,this avoidance of the same note may be a good guide .It`s not about any particular note. Just make them different to each other . So the guitar comparison might be useful for violin makers .
The advice on the guitar forum was --not to do the weight thing . Just find a spot inside the guitar and stick a blob on to kill the dud note.(One note). I thought that was a bad negative way to restrict the vibrations. I ended by weighing the piece of bluetack and substituted a square rod of stainless steel and glued it to the bridge underneath the strings without it touching the top . That`s a fair example of Interference which is completely reversible . The note enrichment was worth talking about but was dismissed .