String Spacing

[Addie]

No crotch arch in Vienna. I've been wanting to ask what that little hole above the crotch is for, but I didn't want to encourage Burgess...

Despite mentioning Burgess and crotches in the same post, I am curious about these holes. I know that once I have the bridge where I want it, I put a tiny pencil mark above the center join for future reference. Could the holes be related?

[curious1]

A collection of original bridges from Austrian instruments

of the 17th to 19th Century

(including Leidolff, Stadlmann, Thir, Stauffer, Stoss, Geissenhof and others)

Courtesy of Marcel Richters, Vienna

http://www.orpheon.org/OldSite/Seiten/education/Bridges.htm

Richters states these are Austrian bridges from the 17th-19th centuries but I don't see any maker listed working much earlier than ~ about 1750.

?

And what is the supporting evidence of that being a bridge of Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu?

[Bruce Carlson]

Richters states these are Austrian bridges from the 17th-19th centuries but I don't see any maker listed working much earlier than ~ about 1750.

?

And what is the supporting evidence of that being a bridge of Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu?

I think the website is run by the Orpheon Foundation and it's hard to say to what extent Richters participated in the captions; if at all. There are other bridges from the Schreinzer collection, that would be old enough, but not on this particular panel. On the website, the 'del Gesù' bridge is, as I see it, wild speculation.

[Brad Dorsey]

The down force is far more than the sideways force...

 

That is true, but the tension on the two outer strings tends to pull them closer together at the bridge -- not farther apart.

[Bruce Carlson]

That is true, but the tension on the two outer strings tends to pull them closer together at the bridge -- not farther apart.

The downward slope of the bridge crest wins in the long run..

 

EDIT:

 

Take the example of the cello c-string that pops out of it's groove. It doesn't slide over to the center of the bridge, it slaps down onto the belly alongside the bridge. The larger the diameter of the string the greater tendency to roll out of the groove if it's not deep enough.

[MeyerFittings]

The captions on these bridges is scripted in the same hand as the labels on other items in the collection such as bass bars and pegs. Some items have them and some do not, leading me to believe that either the origin of the item or the label was lost somewhere along the way.  I assumed that the writing was that of Carl Schreinzer as it was his collection after all. The bridge in the lower left has a cut out, was that for sympathetic strings? I am curious as to the fate of different parts of the collection. I had the opportunity to go through the boxes of artifacts that were in the stacks at the Germanishes Museum in Nuremberg in 1996, but I didn't see this collection of bridges there at the time. I was led to believe by the curator that many items had been picked over between the time that it left the museum in Vienna to what was left of it when it arrived in Nuremberg. It really is a shame since it was one of the few times that someone was interested enough to hold on to these bits of history for us to peruse.

[Evan Smith]

Despite mentioning Burgess and crotches in the same post, I am curious about these holes. I know that once I have the bridge where I want it, I put a tiny pencil mark above the center join for future reference. Could the holes be related?

The hole was to place a silk string through and tie it to the tailpiece so when your little "Addie" was foolin around with dads fiddle and knocked the bridge off dad could find it and put it back on.

Word got out that when Tariso came around with those shiny new fiddles he would chage extra on your trade in ,,,,if your strad or del gesu had a bridge that had gone a missing.