The Violin Beautiful

I think mostly plastic.

I had the impression the same thing was happening with Oberlin. After the varnish “incident” in the bass making workshop it seemed like the school had the summer workshop on a timer. The pandemic provided an excuse—once the programs had been paused it was easier not to resume them. I was disappointed to see the programs shuttered but I’m glad the VSA has found a new spot for now.

UNH decided to oust the Violin Craftsmanship Institute. The instructors would have happily gone back to in-person instruction but the University didn’t want to resume the program. College campuses have taken a much more insular approach in recent years and have attempted to limit public access by cutting out programs that would bring non-students in (except for prospective students and alumni who will give them money, of course!). That way, they can tell parents of students that security is more stringent without hiring any extra campus security personnel.

At the first shop where I worked, the policy was to suggest to the customer that a new board was warranted for both tonal and structural reasons once the thickness dropped below 4 mm. I tend to consider the big picture when looking at this: will a new fingerboard solve enough problems to make sense to the customer? If the thickness is reduced substantially, a new board at a more conventional thickness will change the projection. A new bridge will likely be in order, and that needs to be considered in an explanation to the customer. I’ll plane a fairly thin board if the grooves are shallow enough that I’m not really reducing the edge thickness (they’re almost always too round anyway, so that gives me something to work with). I check the scoop to see how much will need to come out and I look to see if the board is twisted. If I can tell that the board is especially dense, I might let it go a little thinner. I also take into account the impact that the change in thickness will have on the feel of the neck. Some people try to get around the problem of a thick neck by simply cutting the board down; putting a new one on will make the neck bulky, and the customer will not be happy if that’s not understood ahead of time. I strive to anticipate these problems so there aren’t any surprises and the customer doesn’t end up feeling as though the work is just a way to obligate more work and expense. I have seen a lot of fingerboards that warped as a result of being left too thin and unable to keep the neck straight. Sometimes this even happens with thicker fingerboards if the neck is too green and there’s a lot of strain, but most of the time a well made and selected fingerboard will help keep things from going too far awry.

Soundpost adjustment is all about getting a violin to work well for a player. If you want to call it confirmation bias to do just that, have at it. An adjustment is in a sense a negotiation between three parties. The violin has finite qualities that give it a certain character (e.g. arching, graduations, body length, rib height, etc.) although there is some room to refine its voice through setup and adjustment. You can adjust within these parameters but you can’t go further without some kind of major change to the body of the violin. The luthier has working experience or training to draw from and a personal philosophy for adjustment that must allow room for flexibility in order to be able to work with customers. There are some luthiers who are very dogmatic about a magic soundpost position that must be the same for every violin, but they tend to have a reputation for something other than their tonal results. The player has personal preferences for response and tone in a violin as well as a highly developed sensitivity to changes in tone and response in a particular violin that comes from spending hours a day with the violin right at the ear. I can’t keep track of the number of times players have come to me for an adjustment and said something like “I showed the violin to [luthier]. He said he didn’t hear anything and just told me I was imagining things or I was doing something wrong.” The frustration at this kind of comment is intense because the player does hear something (more often than not the player is correct) and saying that the instrument is fine is a denial of the player’s reality. A player may begin with a price range, maker, regional style, or era, but once things are narrowed down, the choice of instrument to buy comes down to the way the instrument performs. When the player finds the combination of things that meet personal requirements, a sale occurs. Those requirements may be entirely subjective but they are no less real than anything that can be plotted on a graph or analyzed in a lab. So when an adjustment takes place, there is a meeting of these three parties, and for there to be a favorable outcome they must work in concert. If a player or luthier tries to steamroll and make the other parties conform without negotiation to their demands, at least two out of three parties will end up shortchanged, and there’s a good chance all three will be unhappy. If you’re adjusting for a player, the player needs to be happy with the results for it to be a success, but getting to that point is much more likely when the three parties are on the same page.

What is your evidence for this? And if adjusting the soundpost is not the solution to the problem, why is it that the people who actually play in the Kennedy Center notice an improvement in sound with adjustment? Are all these professional players wrong or have you just not understood what happens in a good adjustment?

Kreisler was famous (or infamous if you ask some restorers) for tinkering with soundposts. It’s said that he had a new soundpost cut and adjusted everywhere he went, and the poor fitting skills of some of those who worked on the violin contributed to a track getting worn into the top. This was rectified during a restoration. And Kreisler is considered by many to have produced the finest tone of any recorded violinist in history. Some players prefer to “set and forget” the post, others often seek adjustments. I keep thinking about Eddy Merckx, who famously quipped “don’t buy upgrades, ride up grades.” He was known for constantly tinkering with his bikes in order to get the best out of them, and while he didn’t recommend buying lots of add-ons or unnecessary and expensive components, he was obsessive in his approach to adjustment of the equipment he used. Modern cycling teams put millions into chasing “marginal gains,” some of which involve adjustments to things like the position of the body or the height of the handlebars and you often see mechanics hanging out the windows of moving cars to make adjustments to riders’ bikes during the biggest race in the world, and bikes are nowhere near as temperamental as violins!

There are too many possible causes of a break to simply ascribe it to the bow being weak. There are probably millions of mediocre old bows that are still in good condition, but that does not mean they are the strong bows. It could simply be because they weren’t used much at all over the last century. It’s a shame when a good bow breaks, and I would of course recommend that every bow owner treat bows with the greatest care to protect them. Damage will occur to bows at every level over time, though, and unless there are clear flaws in the stick’s wood or shaping, blaming a broken head on the bow itself is a very hasty conclusion to make.

Has anyone else noticed a change in the silking on Goldbrokat medium E strings? When I bought my latest batch from my supplier I noticed that the color had changed to a yellow that resembles the color on the Gold Label E. The original color is a more pale yellow. The gold color wire wrapping at the peg end is the same, but the silk is a different shade of yellow (at least among the E strings I bought). Yes, I am sure they are genuine. Not a big deal, but it caught my eye when I put the first one on and the difference is obvious if you compare an old string.

That’s not what I was suggesting, but it’s worth noting that players tend to use different instruments to play outdoors precisely so that their “good” violins don’t get thrown out of balance by humidity and temperature shifts. Subjecting a violin to these swings is well known to be rough on it. Professional musicians have to deal with these issues in halls or when traveling. In my area we have the Kennedy Center, which is infamous for what it does to instruments as a result of its extreme dryness and permanently circulating draft. Violins that sound great elsewhere suddenly lose their voice in the hall, and this is a major problem for both the orchestral musicians and the musicians who visit. The permanent musicians have adapted to it by selecting violins they are able to still perform under those conditions (they take the violins they’re trying out to rehearsals and performances to make sure they can be heard and that they remain stable), although they still need periodic adjustments to keep their violins in the best shape. Guest artists, however, are faced with a dilemma once they discover in rehearsal that their violins are not speaking: should they leave everything alone and accept that they are going to struggle to be heard, or should they have their instruments adjusted to make them speak in the hall? These performances are often attended by music critics who will write about the performances and ticket prices for the audience are not low, so there is a lot of pressure to overcome the challenges. If you’re constantly feeling the need to adjust a violin, there is likely something other than the soundpost causing tonal issues. But in any case, adjustments aren’t warranted simply because the number on the hygrometer/thermometer changes; they’re warranted when a player finds that the instrument doesn’t work well. For most players, coming in for an adjustment is the result of trying to play with the instrument as-is for as long as they can tolerate before something MUST be done if they want a better sound. String changes are often done before coming in, and the realization that the string change doesn’t solve the problem only makes clearer the need for adjustment.

Old bows are just as susceptible to damage. I would say that a weak stick or one with a weak spot at the head is likely to break earlier in its life, but there are a number of causes for breaks, and while the snap may be sudden, it can be the result of something that’s happened over some time.

Honesty is good business. Rudeness, dismissiveness, and hostility toward customers is not. The way in which one speaks to customers makes a world of difference. A violin or its setup may not be to one’s personal taste, but if you badmouth it to a customer or make snide comments instead of carefully and respectfully showing why it is not made or set up as you would prefer, it’s not some kind of refreshing clarity, it’s just boorishness. You have repeated this suggestion several times as though it’s a given, but it is nothing of the sort.

I’m not sure. It did jump out at me that the lower linings were much shorter, possibly as a result of planing wood off the rib structure from the bottom. I’ve seen that done on instruments that had tall ribs to make them fall into line with average rib heights. I can't offer any insight into the blocks. What I know is that the violin has had a lot of work done in the past. The neck graft looks professional and other repairs inside look like they were done by an experienced workman. I spoke to the shop that appraised it several years ago to ask for more information and they said no one there could come to any conclusions about what it was and that it was a violin that would have to sell “exclusively on its merits as a tool for making music.”

I took a couple photos of the interior. The endbutton hole was too small to get a picture of the while interior that would be useful and I was not doing any repair work that would require the top to be removed. I’ve since returned the violin to its owner, but I’m interested in hearing any additional thoughts if these photos of linings and blocks help. If you look closely at the original photo of the bottom bout, you can see that a rectangular piece of wood was replaced in the rib beneath the saddle; it looks as though there may have previously been a saddle let into the rib.

The idea behind selling snake oil is that the unsuspecting buyer is conned into buying a product of poor quality that’s presented as a magic cure. Once the customer has bought the product there is no recourse when it proves ineffective unless it can be proven in court that the product is being sold in some illegal manner. Thousands of MLMs thrive on this model. The analogy to soundpost adjustment doesn’t really work. Adjustments are completely reversible and they pose no threat to the instrument if done properly. If after an adjustment a customer is not satisfied within a reasonable timeframe, the instrument can be brought back in for another adjustment, likely at no additional cost to the customer (depending on the shop’s policy). A player only pays for an adjustment AFTER being satisfied that the violin sounds the way it should, unlike the snake oil customer who has to pay first and hope for a miracle later. If you tell someone to adjust a violin on their own simply by purchasing different string sets or combinations of strings, that person is stuck shelling out money for strings in the hope that a miracle will occur in sound. If it doesn’t occur, the strings can’t usually be returned and the customer is still left with a violin out of adjustment and the need to keep spending to correct the issue. The person making the string recommendations can throw up their hands and explain it away by making vague excuses about every violin being different and every string having a unique effect on every violin. Good luck getting the person who makes a bad string recommendation to reimburse you for the cost of the mistake! If the soundpost position is the problem, a string change may not even be necessary, and a typical adjustment costs less than a set of strings. I don’t think the snake oil analogy quite applies to making string recommendations either because strings aren’t shoddy products, and when installed as part of a carefully adjusted system, they perform as they are intended. Strings become and remain popular because of their consistent qualities.