Deo Lawson

How far back did you go? Did you really read every post on the site going back to 2001? Or is there a higher cosmic significance?...

Thanks a bunch! These references are wonderful.

The wings are intentional. Could definitely be better though, yeah... Should the notches be so shallow for gut strings as well? The set I'm putting on soon is quite thick.

I meant that it does function but it's not as nice as I'd like it to be. I do have a small plane (the blade comes out crooked, but it works ok) and some files. Sadly, no knife—I use one of those boxcutter sorts with the disposable blades, for lack of an alternative. I guess it'd be a good idea to invest in one.

With considerable success doing rehairs, I've been working on making my own bridges. I find it leagues more difficult though, especially considering I don't have the proper tools... I try my best anyways. This is my latest bridge, functional failure #3. I'd love some general feedback, comments, nitpicks about my messy craftsmanship, etc. Whatever comes to mind.

If you want to tune the afterlengths to exact pitches (which is completely pointless, but whatever), you should also consider the dead region on either end of the string that doesn't vibrate. The strings are too stiff to vibrate freely at such a short length. You'd also have to strip the silk winding, or everything will be moot.

You'd have to make the afterlengths really quite long and almost any resonance you get out of that will be undesirable. The stiffness of the afterlength has a much greater effect on sound (longer afterlength gives less resistance to the bridge and thus a more punchy sound—shorter ones the opposite).

Don't break your strings like this. Ball ends work fine on single-prong tuners. Just put the hook through the hole in the ball. I did that once. Loop ends on a two-prong, though... That takes a bit more ingenuity.

These kinds of shenanigans are exactly why I threw out my shoulder rests.

A blind man could probably do a better job... That would explain the beech wood, though.

A headache and a small amount of regret.

When I play baroque, I simply cut the bark off a pine tree and rub my bow on that sweet, sweet inner flesh. I sprinkle some needles on the hair for that extra bite.

Two dimensional cross sections of three dimensional sound bubbles? Huh? Just looks like Chladni figures to me.

I rehair tip to frog, soaking the hair in a bowl of good old H2O whilst I comb it and burn the ends. I also clamp the hair at the tip with an elastic when I'm busy with the frog to keep it from getting everywhere, and I keep the whole thing in my bow jig at all times. Knotting the ends inevitably crosses the hairs, so you need to get good at carving spreaders that make a tight fit in the ferrule. Another tip: tie the hair a bit short, so that the frog goes right up to the grip or a little forwards from where you want it later. As soon as the humidity changes, the hair on your bow may stretch considerably and it can get real hairy. Gave up on V.com, eh? Those guys only ever have one answer: "visit a luthier".

When photography has rendered your craft obsolete. "Ah, we'll just sell it for a mill and shred it right after! It'll be artsy!"

Labels bear no weight in determining the origin or value of a violin. They are possible clues, but some 95% of labels in violins these days are "fake".

I self-taught vibrato just by, well, vibrating. I was always praised by my examiners for my beautiful vibrato. Never once have I done a vibrato exercise or read a book on vibrato. I just made the sound I wanted to hear.

If the fingerboard mass had any effect, you'd need a military grade microphone, a treated space, and spectral analysis machinery to detect the difference. You think Strad was tapping his fingerboards with a metal rod and checking the frequency response on his laptop? If he'd wasted all his time with those shenanigans, he wouldn't have been able to make so many hundreds of the most beautiful instruments the world has ever seen.

There are mezzo violins with a body length of 15 inches, and some even longer. I've always wanted to try one!

Superstition. The fingerboard should be made as light as possible while leaving enough material for future repairs. It has no effect on sound.

... So, what's the question?

I looked around on the big ol' web for information about gut string shelf life, but could only find discussion about synthetics and steel strings. (It's plastic wrapped in metal---it's not gonna go bad if you leave it in your case for a month...) My question is SPECIFICALLY PERTAINING TO GUT STRINGS. I want to know how long guts can stay in storage before they start to rot. Would they go bad if I bought them a month or two in advance but kept them in a dark, dry corner of my basement? How do I make sure my strings are "fresh" to begin with? (And does it even really matter as long as they haven't become brittle?)

You've got to take more (and better) photos for anyone to be able to tell you whether it's worth repairing.

May as well make the best of the zero-G environment...

This is old news... The same inventor has turned a few violins into Frankenstein abominations in pursuit of improving resonance. Basically built a huge metal frame around the body and isolated it from all the extraneous parts (neck, tailpiece, chinrest) so it levitates in air. Maybe it works. Maybe it doesn't. Have no idea, because his demonstrations are recorded on a potato. His violin is so flimsy you can bend it like with the whammy on a guitar... I admire the guy though.