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Showing results for tags 'ebony'.
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I know this is such a micro topic, but in terms of different types of wood, such as Ebony, Rosewood and Boxwood, which wood has what characteristics to sound and which is better in general (boxwood in my city costs way more) and also, does a old German peg differ from possibly Indian or Chinese wood? Is it just a matter of seasoning? How do I test the pegs to determine if it is a good peg? My usual method is to gently flick it and hear if the sound is crisp. lastly, is mechanical other still inferior to manual ones in terms of sound? I have heard mechanical pegs makes the sound of the violin sound more artificial and less natural, so is manual pegs still better? Thank you in advance.
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Good morning. Some time ago I had an old German copy Stradivari violin, which is well made, but all its accessories (pegs, fingerboard, tailpiece) were plastic and of poor quality, in addition to having a poorly adjusted sound post and a poorly made bridge. The sound of the violin was very loud and strident, like an old radio and in my orchestra it was the violin that stood out the most, to the point that my joking companions called it "il cannone". This Christmas an old luthier friend who lives more than 1000km away came to town to spend Christmas with his family and I immediately asked him to adjust my violin. As I mentioned earlier, the violin has a strong, deep sound, but with some small parasitic vibrations that caused it to sound like an old radio blaring, and I blamed this on poor quality accessories and poor sound post setup. and the bridge. He added ebony parts to the pegs, chin rest, tailpiece and fingerboard, since the ones that the instrument had were not original, they were made of poor quality wood painted black, added shortly before I acquired the instrument. The pegs were also painted and poorly adjusted, the tailpiece was plastic. He added an ebony fingerboard that he recycled from a cello fingerboard, ebony pegs set to perfection, a bridge that fully fits the top of the violin, and an ebony tailpiece. When I saw the instrument I was surprised, especially by the fingerboard, which had a tiny and old flame that matches the flame of the violin. When you finally play the instrument notice the change in sound. It still sounded loud, but it no longer had those annoying parasitic vibrations, instead it now sounded round and warm, but the A string did have a decrease in its sound, being very muted compared to the rest of the strings, as if there was something that prevented it from vibrating freely. I talked to my friend and he told me that it could be the position of the sound post, that he hoped to do that job with me so that I could tell him which place seemed best to me, but he couldn't do it because he traveled back He went ahead to his house, for which he gave me the violin with the sound post without my being able to play it before. He added some new pirastro tonic strings, which are nylon wound. Before that he had high tension all metal strings. I don't know what this decrease in sound could be due to, specifically of the A string. I think it may be the excess of ebony parts prevents the violin from vibrating freely, a sound post configuration that does not enhance the A string, the new low-tension nylon strings that do not fully vibrate the instrument or... all of the above together. What do you think?
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Looking through piles of old ebony fingerboards and other ebony pieces I realized that finding a perfect match is indeed pretty difficult. To make no mistake I first cleaned the frog and polished it with fine micro mesh. Then i polished a small portion of seemingly good matching pieces. There are many different hues of black. Blueish black, brownish black, grayish bkack etc. The type I was looking for had a blueish hue. However, when I found an almost matching piece I saw that the pore structure wouldn't match. With further search I got a piece with finer pores but color was a sort of suboptimal, somehow not dark enough. Finally I decided to select rather by pore structure than color At the same time I wondered if the blueish hue didn't come from wear . Before glueing the piece I tried to find the best orientation to have a similar pore structure . Wondering if someone here has a better recipe to match ebony replacement wood in a frog restoration?
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- bow restoration
- ebony
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I was thinking about stocking up on fingerboards with the assumption that availability and quality of FBs are decreasing. First, is this a false assumption? If I buy some FBs (with Fb in hand) what should I look for so that I'm not buying a pigs ear made up to look like a silk purse? Thanks, Jim
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So this morning I planed a blank for the nut entirely without problems with beautiful perfectly smooth faces. I then decided to plane a blank also for the saddle (with the same plane but a different piece of ebony) and just could not do it at all. Whichever direction I planed there seemed to be a bit which was against the grain. Eventually I resorted to sanding the surfaces smooth. What is the reason for this and is there a solution?