Reasons for violin not ringing

[M Alpert]

6 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

Me too... also for the resistance to strings cutting into the wood.  I can't measure the density, but for the same cut, the Aubert bridges seem to end up lighter, implying lower density.  

I have understood that is the point of the wood treatment, to lighten the wood, and reduce dampening.

Admittedly,  I have no "proof".

[Michael Darnton]

A few players over the years have told me that they prefer an instrument that's too bright because they can always make it sound warm, but a dark instrument is just a dark instrument. I feel the same about bridges--If I want it to lose weight I've got my knife for that, but you can't put back the sound that mush filters out. In the end I think most shops build a sound that works for them and their customers and if they're successful it doesn't really matter how it gets there.

But I do hate seeing five year old bridges that aren't able to hold the strings up.

My model for bridge wood is a Strad cello's that had a Silvestre & Maucotel bridge probably from the time of their 1920 cert that was still there 100 years in spite of being the wrong height. We tried replacing it three times with different blanks and never found one that was better. Then after we sold it I found some blanks that felt the same in the hand and have used those ever since, with good results. If you've ever hefted a Tourte bow, it was a similar feeling: not too large, nor too heavy, but feels like a steel bar. And cuts like rock (but I haven't ever cut a Tourte. :-)

[Marty Kasprzyk]

The length of ringing after the bow is lifted off of the string is dependent upon how fast the string's fixed amount of vibrating energy is transmitted to the violin bridge and body. A rapid transfer (high power) will produce a loud note with a short ring.  A slow transfer (low power) will produce a softer note with a long ring.  

The rate of energy transfer is in turn dependent upon the amount of mismatch between the impedance Zs of the string (its mass per unit length m, times the string tension T)  and the impedance of the violin Zb (its mass times its stiffness).

So if you want a long ring (sustain for harps) it is helpful to have relatively heavy and stiff soundboard with a light and low tension string  and the ring will be long but not very loud.

On the other hand if you want to produce real and loud quick notes with little ringing between them then heavier strings with a lighter soundboard (like a banjo top).

A violin is a little different because there is a moveable bridge with its own mass and stiffness and therefore a resonance and impedance placed between the string and the soundboard. This is thoroughly discussed in Chapter 1 'Impedance and the violin' and Chapter 18.2 'Violin' in the book :"Why You Hear What You Hear", Eric J. Heller, 2013, Princeton University Press. The influence of the bridge on the violin's sound character such as the "bridge hill' and so on are described.

From Heller it appears that the optimum bridge impedance Zb for maximum loudness should be equal to square root of the product of the violin's impedance Zv  times the strings impedance Zs  :   Zb =(ZvZs)^0.5

So many people have investigated the effects of different stiffness(from bending at the waist) and moving mass (mostly at the top of the bridge) to improve the loudness of a violin.

But the string's impedance Zb is equal to the square root of the product of the string's tension T and mass per unit length M: Zb = (TM)^0.5  and since the violin has four different strings, each with its own different impedance, it is not possible to have one optimum bridge for all four strings at the same time so some sort of compromise is needed or some choice made.

For example if your violin's E string has poor loudness you could use a light but stiff bridge especially made for boosting its output while simulaneously decreasing the other strings to achieve a more balanced output for all four strings. On the other hand a weak G string might benefit from a heavier bridge and so on. The attached graph shows how the optimum (peak weights) bridge weights might be different for each string on one of my violins.

If you are not getting much ringing it might mean that your bridge was properly built to give as loud as possible output compromise which is often desired.

If you would rather have some ringing with not the loudest sound then maybe a non optimum heavier and/or stiffer bridge would help. Careful measurement of the bridge's stiffness and its effective moving mass could guide you as you carve away the waist, top, or legs etc. Or with years of experience you might get a feel for what to do.  Or just trying a random bunch of different bridges might help by chance.  Even a dumb squirrel can find a nut sometimes.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[nathan slobodkin]

Gee, Marty. That sounds like science!

Thank you for this post. If I am understanding correctly then a slightly more massive bridge should ring more on the highest notes but reduce the volume of the E in relation to the other strings? Would it also reduce the relative volume of the higher harmonics of the E itself?

[uguntde]

On 1/13/2024 at 12:21 PM, David Burgess said:

The new bridge looks quite wimpy (flexible) compared to the old. Much wimpier than than I usually find will get the best out of a violin.

WIthout seeing from the side how thick it is?

[uguntde]

On 1/13/2024 at 1:49 PM, Michael Darnton said:

I never cut away on the area that you might call the upper thigh, either from above or below. There's a specific spot that I don't touch between the outer, upper bend of the arch between the feet and directly above that where I leave whatever the maker gave me. That's a critical area for strength. There were a lot of places to remove wood compared with the old bridge, but that isn't one of them, IMO. I'll cut down from there (and a bit inwards just to blend, maybe)towards the knees on top and out towards the ankles on bottom (and round the top of the arch just a bit, inside of that point) but those two spots are my pivot points for all of those cuts, leaving the upper thigh as strong as possible. Likewise, I never narrow the waist--those are the two areas, along with the other spot I don't touch, between the kidneys and the heart, through which ALL of the vibrations have to pass. 

For me the trick is to keep supportive wood while removing a lot of non supportive , damping, wood, especially around the edges of the bridge (but don't go too far and cut off the kidney spurs!) This external, damping, wood is where I do my adjusting for sound. You can leave quite a blob of wood in the center of the bridge and not hurt anything, but put that same wood on the top edge and it kills everything, for instance. Sound can be removed through either flexibility in the wrong place or weight in the wrong place, and I like to think that a perfect violin wouldn't need much interference between it and the string: maximum stiffness, minimum damping, as a starting point, at least, and then go from there by adding weight to kill things I don't want to hear. That's *my* model, anyway, as much as I have one.

I don't know if these ideas will be helpful, but they're how I work, at least.

Would you leave the feet as think as they are? -  I prefer thinner. And do you cut the bridgte from both sides, the tail piece side and the fingerboard side? Do you use a plane only or also sand paper for thicknessing?

[uguntde]

On 1/13/2024 at 1:49 PM, Michael Darnton said:

I never cut away on the area that you might call the upper thigh, either from above or below. There's a specific spot that I don't touch between the outer, upper bend of the arch between the feet and directly above that where I leave whatever the maker gave me. That's a critical area for strength. There were a lot of places to remove wood compared with the old bridge, but that isn't one of them, IMO. I'll cut down from there (and a bit inwards just to blend, maybe)towards the knees on top and out towards the ankles on bottom (and round the top of the arch just a bit, inside of that point) but those two spots are my pivot points for all of those cuts, leaving the upper thigh as strong as possible. Likewise, I never narrow the waist--those are the two areas, along with the other spot I don't touch, between the kidneys and the heart, through which ALL of the vibrations have to pass. 

For me the trick is to keep supportive wood while removing a lot of non supportive , damping, wood, especially around the edges of the bridge (but don't go too far and cut off the kidney spurs!) This external, damping, wood is where I do my adjusting for sound. You can leave quite a blob of wood in the center of the bridge and not hurt anything, but put that same wood on the top edge and it kills everything, for instance. Sound can be removed through either flexibility in the wrong place or weight in the wrong place, and I like to think that a perfect violin wouldn't need much interference between it and the string: maximum stiffness, minimum damping, as a starting point, at least, and then go from there by adding weight to kill things I don't want to hear. That's *my* model, anyway, as much as I have one.

I don't know if these ideas will be helpful, but they're how I work, at least.

Would you leave the feet as think as they are? -  I prefer thinner. And do you cut the bridgte from both sides, the tail piece side and the fingerboard side? Do you use a plane only or also sand paper for thicknessing?

[uguntde]

On 1/13/2024 at 1:49 PM, Michael Darnton said:

I never cut away on the area that you might call the upper thigh, either from above or below. There's a specific spot that I don't touch between the outer, upper bend of the arch between the feet and directly above that where I leave whatever the maker gave me. That's a critical area for strength. There were a lot of places to remove wood compared with the old bridge, but that isn't one of them, IMO. I'll cut down from there (and a bit inwards just to blend, maybe)towards the knees on top and out towards the ankles on bottom (and round the top of the arch just a bit, inside of that point) but those two spots are my pivot points for all of those cuts, leaving the upper thigh as strong as possible. Likewise, I never narrow the waist--those are the two areas, along with the other spot I don't touch, between the kidneys and the heart, through which ALL of the vibrations have to pass. 

For me the trick is to keep supportive wood while removing a lot of non supportive , damping, wood, especially around the edges of the bridge (but don't go too far and cut off the kidney spurs!) This external, damping, wood is where I do my adjusting for sound. You can leave quite a blob of wood in the center of the bridge and not hurt anything, but put that same wood on the top edge and it kills everything, for instance. Sound can be removed through either flexibility in the wrong place or weight in the wrong place, and I like to think that a perfect violin wouldn't need much interference between it and the string: maximum stiffness, minimum damping, as a starting point, at least, and then go from there by adding weight to kill things I don't want to hear. That's *my* model, anyway, as much as I have one.

I don't know if these ideas will be helpful, but they're how I work, at least.

Would you leave the feet as think as they are? -  I prefer thinner. And do you cut the bridgte from both sides, the tail piece side and the fingerboard side? Do you use a plane only or also sand paper for thicknessing?

[Michael Darnton]

@uguntde   I use a plane and sandpaper, both. For a start, usually I cut the bottom of the bridge to 4.6mm, the top to 1.2 to 1.5, the center varies. The feet about 1 mm high, ankles 2.5-3.5 wide. I don't cut the places previously mentioned. If you mean thinning the bridge, I thin from both sides, leaving neither side dead flat, more shape on the side facing the board.

https://archive.violinbridges.co.uk/darnton-hersh-8/

This bridge is a bit old. I handle the thicknesses somewhat differently now, for tonal reasons.
 

[uguntde]

2 minutes ago, Michael Darnton said:

@uguntde   I use a plane and sandpaper, both. For a start, usually I cut the bottom of the bridge to 4.6mm, the top to 1.2 to 1.5, the center varies. The feet about 1 mm high, ankles 2.5-3.5 wide. I don't cut the places previously mentioned. If you mean thinning the bridge, I thin from both sides, leaving neither side dead flat, more shape on the side facing the board.

https://archive.violinbridges.co.uk/darnton-hersh-8/

Thanks. Beautiful bridge. I have seen makers leaving the tailpiece side untouched, cuttign only thr fingerboard side.

[Michael Darnton]

10 minutes ago, uguntde said:

I have seen makers leaving the tailpiece side untouched, cuttign only thr fingerboard side.

Thanks for the compliment.

This is common, and the people who do it say that the bridge will stay flat on the back. but it's not true--the only way it can go is to turn concave and this is almost inevitable. A small amount of convexity will prevent that. I've seen this happen nearly every time. It's like if you squeeze a banana from the ends: it is not possible for it to do anything but go farther in the direction it already bent. A bridge cross section is essentially a banana with one flat side, one convex, and it can only bend in one direction. Tell those people to check their work with a straight edge in 10 years.

[David Burgess]

1 hour ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

The length of ringing after the bow is lifted off of the string is dependent upon how fast the string's fixed amount of vibrating energy is transmitted to the violin bridge and body. A rapid transfer (high power) will produce a loud note with a short ring.  A slow transfer (low power) will produce a softer note with a long ring.  

Example: The sustain on a solid body guitar will be much longer than on an acoustic, but the solid body guitar produces very little sound all by itself.

[Michael Darnton]

[insert joke about adjusting amount of ring based on considerations of player quality vs concern for the neighbors' ears.]

[LCF]

9 hours ago, Michael Darnton said:

Then after we sold it I found some blanks that felt the same in the hand and have used those ever since, with good results. 

Is there any specific maple species which is preferred for bridges?

 

I make my own bridge blanks, mostly from plain English Sycamore Acer PseudoP which I cut in 1980 and it is light and strong but the only other plain maple type I have is some rock maple which is hard but a bit 'woolley', so not much to choose from and I am running low!

[Michael Darnton]

I do not know what species I prefer.

[Peter K-G]

Anyone adjusting bridges when in playing state?

[LCF]

On 1/15/2024 at 8:20 AM, David Burgess said:

Example: The sustain on a solid body guitar will be much longer than on an acoustic, but the solid body guitar produces very little sound all by itself.

David, have you ever noticed that electrics which do make a pleasant sound acoustically, obviously not much of it, don't always sound good when plugged in?

[Aston4]

2 hours ago, LCF said:

David, have you ever noticed that electrics which do make a pleasant sound acoustically, obviously not much of it, don't always sound good when plugged in?

Not David here, but it is quite obvious that the pickups, and the string construction, have everything to do with the sound of an electric guitar, while what the guitar is made of, what the density and weight of the wood happen to be, contribute zero to the sound plugged in.  Zero.   Not just my opinion, throughly researched by others for decades and confirmed by my own ears. There is a lot of myth about electric guitar sound.  Reality is pickups+strings and string height over the individual coils and position of the coil along the length of the vibrating string. That's it. 

 

An electric guitar made of solid gold and one made of balsa wood, with the same pickups, strings, and dimensions, will sound exactly the same through a headphone amp. Plug either into an oscilloscope and the waveform is identical. They will sound different through a cranked up amplifier in front of the guitars, because of feedback.

[David Burgess]

2 hours ago, LCF said:

David, have you ever noticed that electrics which do make a pleasant sound acoustically, obviously not much of it, don't always sound good when plugged in?

"Acoustic guitars" which also have pickups? I think so. But I'm hard pressed to say what a "good" electric guitar sound is, since such a wide variety can be "good" in different contexts.
Off the top of my head (and I'm quite willing to be further educated), I attribute the difference largely to the electronics chosen, as well as to the pickups not getting much of a signal from the various body and air modes, to the extent that an acoustic-electric using internal or external microphones, accelerometers, or pressure sensors can.

[LCF]

11 minutes ago, David Burgess said:

"Acoustic guitars" which also have pickups? I think so. But I'm hard pressed to say what a "good" electric guitar sound is, since such a wide variety can be "good" in different contexts.
Off the top of my head (and I'm quite willing to be further educated), I attribute the difference largely to the electronics chosen, as well as to the pickups not getting much of a signal from the various body and air modes, to the extent that an acoustic-electric using internal or external microphones, accelerometers, or pressure sensors can.

I was thinking the acoustic sound you get from an electric gtr either solid or semi. It has surprised me at times that it has so little relation to the electric sound.

I'm not a fan of acoustic guitars, violins, anything, with pickups. Most people will disagree but they always sound a bit plastic to my ears. Useful, necessary, but ... plastic.

[LCF]

2 hours ago, Aston4 said:

Not David here, but it is quite obvious that the pickups, and the string construction, have everything to do with the sound of an electric guitar, while what the guitar is made of, what the density and weight of the wood happen to be, contribute zero to the sound plugged in.  Zero.   Not just my opinion, throughly researched by others for decades and confirmed by my own ears. There is a lot of myth about electric guitar sound.  Reality is pickups+strings and string height over the individual coils and position of the coil along the length of the vibrating string. That's it. 

 

An electric guitar made of solid gold and one made of balsa wood, with the same pickups, strings, and dimensions, will sound exactly the same through a headphone amp. Plug either into an oscilloscope and the waveform is identical. They will sound different through a cranked up amplifier in front of the guitars, because of feedback.

Probably not the place for this discussion but I think there are some differences in sustain at least and a Tele thinline for instance does not sound the same as a regular Tele even with the same running gear but the thinline sounds slightly better acoustically. Worse electrically. 

[David Burgess]

On 1/14/2024 at 4:50 PM, David Burgess said:

Example: The sustain on a solid body guitar will be much longer than on an acoustic, but the solid body guitar produces very little sound all by itself.

I need to back-pedal on this. We just compared the sustain on a Gibson Nighthawk solid body, with a Santa Cruz dreadnought acoustic (since my wife happens to own both) and the "ring time" was similar enough that it was hard for us to tell the difference. I know, tiny sample size, and she has more of each type that we could try, but I thought I should put that out there anyway.

[Aston4]

8 hours ago, David Burgess said:

I need to back-pedal on this. We just compared the sustain on a Gibson Nighthawk solid body, with a Santa Cruz dreadnought acoustic (since my wife happens to own both) and the "ring time" was similar enough that it was hard for us to tell the difference. I know, tiny sample size, and she has more of each type that we could try, but I thought I should put that out there anyway.

You can generalize.  Extensively tested for decades.  Density of body makes zero difference.  I can dredge up some objective testing youtube vids if you don't feel like googling your own.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

12 hours ago, David Burgess said:

I need to back-pedal on this. We just compared the sustain on a Gibson Nighthawk solid body, with a Santa Cruz dreadnought acoustic (since my wife happens to own both) and the "ring time" was similar enough that it was hard for us to tell the difference. I know, tiny sample size, and she has more of each type that we could try, but I thought I should put that out there anyway.

Were oth these with the same strigs?

[HoGo]

14 hours ago, David Burgess said:

I need to back-pedal on this. We just compared the sustain on a Gibson Nighthawk solid body, with a Santa Cruz dreadnought acoustic (since my wife happens to own both) and the "ring time" was similar enough that it was hard for us to tell the difference. I know, tiny sample size, and she has more of each type that we could try, but I thought I should put that out there anyway.

I guess this was because the Acoustic starts with louder ring and the electric wil less loud. The decay rate is greater on the acoustic but it will take similar time to the electric to decrease below your hearing threshold. Of course it is also likely that the strings on the acoustic are a bit heavier than on electric.