GeorgeH

Bumping this just in case somebody may have seen something like this before.

@Danube Fiddler Your personal and poison-penned attacks on people who post here under their real names are as inane as they are cowardly. Delete your account.* *A social meme for when someone says or does something so embarrassing or inappropriate that they should just close their account and go away in shame.

We've seen everything.

I don't know, but I am really only interested in the purpose of the numbers and/or if anybody has seen similar numbers stamped like that in a bow stick and frog.

This bow has a number stamped on both sides of the frog and on the player's side of the stick. There may have possibly been a brand on the stick, too, but there is nothing legible there now. I was thinking that it might have been used in a sales-sample case, but that is a sheer guess. Has anyone seen a number stamped on a bow like this, or know why it would be stamped like this?

I found this in the flotsam and jetsam of an old violin case. Anybody seen one before?

Polyester is a very stable and inert material, and I cannot see any reason that it would react chemically with a dry violin varnish.

Post some pictures of the bow. It might be worth more than the violin.

Use: https://downforeveryoneorjustme.com

Did a graft join fail?

Interesting article from the University of Delaware: PITCH PERFECT NEUROSCIENCE

Is it straight and how is the camber? Re-hairing alone may not make a bow playable, and the cost of re-cambering and re-hairing may be more than the bow is worth.

I found my lifetime violin in the late 1970’s. I had a "Wanted" ad in the local paper classifieds looking for violins, and somebody called me and so I went to look. There, in an old case, was a John Friedrich violin, New York, c. 1914, and a silver-mounted August Nurnberger bow. I believe that the violin, case, and bow were all part of the original outfit sold by John Friedrich & Bro. It had been in the seller’s attic for years, and had a crack in the lower right bout. I thought it looked nice, but I had never heard of John Friedrich. Since it was an “American violin” I only paid $200 for it. (I knew nothing about bows at the time, and paid no attention to it.) I dropped it off at a luthier to have the crack repaired, and he called me that night to tell me that this was a very fine violin and it should have the top removed to be properly repaired. The repairs and restoration cost me twice as much as I had paid for it. The violin is a masterpiece. In the ~40 years I have owned it, I have owned dozens of different violins and played dozens more, but I never found a violin that I would trade it for. I am still delighted every time I open the case to play it. And I still have the August Nurnberger bow, though mostly just for sentimental reasons.

There are also fabulous 19th and early 20th century American makers like John Friedrich, George Gemunder, Carl Becker, and Heinrich Richard Knopf, just to name a few. If you go into the lesser-known categories, you can find some gorgeous players that sound wonderful and are flat-out steals. I recently bought a 1908 Samuel R. Parker (I know, who's that, right?) from Ohio that can knock your socks off. Plus a George Millis that is insanely beautiful and can fill an auditorium. It isn't surprising that some unscrupulous dealers are replacing the original American-maker labels with obscure Italian-maker labels and then adding a zero or two onto the price tags.

The American history of violin making shows that they do reveal their secrets. In the early 19th century America was not lacking in people skilled in fine wood-working, but the violins that they made were idiosyncratic because they had no exposure to fine European violins. They had no good models and often worked from pictures and memories. In the second half of the 19th century European musicians began touring American cities, and bringing their fine Italian violins with them. These violins needed maintenance and repairs, and so American luthiers had the opportunity to study and model them. Plus, European luthiers began to immigrate to America, bringing their skills with them. Thus, as the “degrees of separation” between Stradivari and the Americans closed, American luthiers began to build world-class violins. It is a silly argument to make that simply being exposed to fine instruments is enough to make one a great maker. In isn’t, anymore than being able to play Bach should automatically make one a great classical player. It is necessary, but not sufficient. Perhaps the question should now be why haven’t the German and Italian makers kept up with the Americans?