J-G

Wonderful! Fine music, excellent playing— vigorous, colourful. Thank you for posting.

This book? https://holfter.com/main_bigware_34.php?items_id=305

A fair question. Not "info" perhaps, but "grounds for suspicion": 1. The story itself, a very common kind of family folklore we've often seen here. The details seldom stand up to close examination. 2. The condition of the violin itself. It doesn't look like it was ever treasured by anyone, including your musician grandfather. Do you know if he ever strung it up and tried playing it? Or tried to get it identified, or appraised for insurance? I may be wrong of course. Others will have solider arguments once better photos are available.

I think the "friend" was pulling your grandpa's leg.

Thank you for sharing your bows with us, ITD. And for sparing us the Merc.

Yes it certainly is. The OP may also own a car. Should we ask about that too?

A little off topic, but I have often wondered whether the violin maker Asa Warren White was an ancestor of the fine San Francisco guitar builder Warren White, born around 1936, died in 1994. (Inevitably, Google images conflates the two.) The monograph VdA cites above shows a son of the violin builder called Warren, but doesn't take the line any further. Does anyone here know of a connection between the two?

This is a minor thing, and I'm not sure it results from the recent update, but it seems very strange that when a thread title has been edited we're told what it was changed TO, rather than what it was changed FROM. We can see immediately what the current thread title is, but may be wondering what became of a discussion we saw earlier under a different title. Would this be easy to fix?

I seem to recall (back in the eighties or so) a few jazz guitarists playing amplified archtops at high volume used to have a really massive soundpost inserted— to reduce resonance and discourage feedback. Some others used to close up the f-holes or fill the body with synthetic foam for the same purpose.

Yep, a great Jackson-Guldan is still a Jackson-Guldan.

I have two German trade bows, one stamped Willy Roth, the other HOMA. FWIW, one is completely round at the downstream end of the lapping, l3.5 cm from the nipple; the other is still faintly octagonal at the balance point, about 24 cm down. I wouldn't have thought this detail tells us anything important about either origin or quality. Or does it?

To quite a few of us here, that won't sound very old. By all means, post photos!

Found it. Turns out the whole 2-hour video I mentioned (The Art of Conducting) is on Youtube, and it's well worth watching. The percussionist's anecdote comes at about 55:18 in the video.

Not necessarily a myth, but perhaps a story about the effect seeing Furtwängler standing in the doorway had on the orchestra member who told the story.

Thanks, Philip, good to hear this story again! I recall hearing it told in a televised interview (maybe in the seventies?) by one of the BPO percussionists, someone who had been in the orchestra since Furtwängler's day. I think the excerpt appeared on a video compilation called something like The Great Conductors, with video snatches of many of the greats going way back. Wish I could find my copy.