David Burgess

"Where have all the bench dogs gone Looong time passing....."

Check out Davide Sora. Lots of accolades. Plus, he's gen-wine Italian, and while not quite as nearly-dead-aged as I am, is gettin' up there.

Is there somewhere in that video where she plays the C string or the E string alone? Playing two strings at a time doesn't really give a good idea of the clearance between individual strings, or between the bow and the C-bouts.

Would you describe your playing style as being closer to that of a "pusher", or a "tickler"?

A 5-string won't tolerate a high C-bout width (because the bow will run into the C-bouts), unless the player only tickles the top and bottom strings, or alternately, uses a bridge curvature flattened so much that the middle strings can only be tickled.

So am I, and so are lots of other people. So what?

Yes, "sound adjustment" skills in the profession are all over the map.

A lot of it has to do with the mass-per-length-unit changing with use. This can happen either from wear (most obvious on aluminum-wound strings which can often be seen to have worn flat on the fingerboard side with extended use), or eventual internal contamination from rosin, body oils, skin detritus, etc.

It can be, with an instrument which has too little mass and/or rigidity for a heavier string, or a heavier playing style of the user. Yes, but not without collateral tonal consequences, which many good players will consider to be negative. Kinda depends on where a particular player's priorities lie.

The position of the eyes of the ff-holes can vary quite a bit. There are many different strategies for determining the centerline of an instrument, but positioning it according to the ff-holes is not one which I have heard highly-touted, by some of the best in our business.

Horrors, it might be possible that the legend of these makers individually going through the forest during a full moon, tapping on trees to assess their tonal properties, might be a myth?

Yes, a high overstand can compensate for a high "neck projection", as far as reducing the downward force on the bridge, not that there aren't other things involved like the increased mass of a higher bridge. I do consider some settling. The first time I used a cross-grain spline in a cello neck, I didn't know for sure if it would have any value or not. So I set the neck in about 10mm high, which had become my custom, since I considered 5-7m,m to be an average drop with either a fresh cello neck graft, or a new cello, over span of about ten years, in a climate with high humidity cycling. About ten years later, same cello, Rene Morel called me on the phone. "Davide, we have your cello in zee shop for a new breege. You has set zee neck too high, and we has to add wood to zee bridge feet". That wasn't my first clue that this was working, but probably my first after ten years of a cello being on the East Coast. But I still set in a new cello neck about 3mm high, because not all subsequent neck drop is due solely to bending of the neck heel. While owners of older instruments may expect rather expensive routine maintenance, including periodic neck resets, it seems that owners of newer instruments do not, so I've put a lot of effort into trying to meet new owner's expectations.

Note: I have corrected my 160 C typo to 260.

Added linseed oil will (or should, unless one manages to mess up the process) alter the oil to resin ratio of the cooked varnish, if the temperature is momentarily brought up to 260 C or higher. However, even if the pre-existing varnish and the oil are mixed together cold, it will still result in a varnish which behaves as if it was softer. Yet another caveat: While linseed oil can be a good initial plasticizer or softening agent, it will eventually get hard and brittle with enough time, or exposure to UV light. Another overly-axiomatic statement, which is not necessarily true. Perhaps it's true for you, at your experience level.

A quick Google search didn't tell me much at all. Rosin, and neutralized rosin taste pretty much the same to me. Perhaps I need to attend more wine tasting classes, so I can learn to better discriminate between "tropical" and "island fruity"?