Tap tone

[Johnnyguru]

What is the best way for a novice to go about tap tuning on violin plates.

[Torbjörn Zethelius]

The best way imo is to ignore it. Instead follow sound advice.

[Johnnyguru]

Thanks,

what advice would you give for balancing belly and back plates? 

[not telling]

Haha! Torbjörn is so right! But everyone was into it for a long time. So all of the information you could ever hope for on the Carleen Hutchins stuff is out in the world in the public domain. You'll probably have to watch a lot of hours of youtube videos to find anything useful.

Those who have shared the best information and methods have likely enjoyed long, successful careers. I imagine besides being motivated by altruism and love of the craft such contributors are confident enough that even a pro (let alone a novice) can't do the same thing they have done any better, that they have in many cases been extremely generous with detailed information. Look for those who have nothing to sell you and nothing to hide (avoid the ones who say you can pay them to know the real secrets of Stradivari, eg). There are a lot of ideas to explore on how to match plates and graduate optimally. So, have fun sorting out the best ones.  

Also, again, don't do the tap-tone stuff. You can tune a plate, but once that tuned plate is glued to something else, it's something else. Everyone seems to have decided that collectively a few years ago.

[Torbjörn Zethelius]

You're welcome. There are so many ideas. Speaking of balancing, when I was in violin making school I happened to weigh my plates that I was building for a violin and discovered that they were close to a golden ratio relationship. I haven't followed up on this 'fact' but who knows there could be something to it?

[Don Noon]

52 minutes ago, not telling said:

You can tune a plate, but 

... you can't tune a fish.  Sorry, it just had to be said.

The good thing about taptones is that it's fairly quick and easy to get them and log them into a notebook (sorry, today it's spreadsheet).  Then, after accumulating decades of data, you can analyze them and perform correlations, and discover that it's all pretty meaningless.  At best, you can see that ones that were extremely thick had high taptones and sounded a certain way, and ones that were extremely thin had lower taptones and sounded a different way... but you didn't need the taptones to tell you that.  

If you are hoping for something to predict good vs. bad sound, taptones ain't it.  

And I can't imagine any reason why a "golden ratio" for anything would do it either.

[Davide Sora]

6 hours ago, Johnnyguru said:

What is the best way for a novice to go about tap tuning on violin plates.

I'm one of those who think that something useful can be gleaned from those simple and immediate measurements. However, look at your tap tones as an indication of any other kind (weight, thickness, density, etc.) to see how far you are from a "safe" zone. Don't go crazy to reach a specific target, or tuning them, either within the same plate (m1, m2, m5) or between plates (top and back). 

Ignore the golden ratio, or take it at your own risk. It's a religion like any other, on the same level as tuning tap tones.

[Johnnyguru]

Thanks everyone for your useful comments.

I am a retired woodcarver and came into guitar repair by accident. Have since been encouraged to make a violin. I have a cheap German one that I have taken the top off repaired the ribs, end block, and removed the poor bass bar and thinned the belly down. Using this as a learning project before I start on the two I would like to build from scratch so looking to see the best way to balance the plates to get a decent sounding instrument. 
wish me luck. :-)

[David Burgess]

8 hours ago, Johnnyguru said:

What is the best way for a novice to go about tap tuning on violin plates.

Don't tap it too hard with too heavy a hammer.

[David Beard]

I tend to think it's is worse then meaningless.  If you make the taps very clear, you are effectively narrowing the resonances.  This makes response spikier, opposite of what is desired.

[Dr. Mark]

9 hours ago, Johnnyguru said:

What is the best way for a novice to go about tap tuning on violin plates.

All of these posters are likely 'just in case' plate tappers to a greater or lesser degree.  Some replace tapping with speed of sound and density measurements, others just like to bend the plates a little to see if they feel 'ok'.  Even I have my own version of tap tooning:

 

[Dr. Mark]

I guess plate bending is more like the 'stanky leg' test.  Somebody stop him!:

[Dr. Mark]

Here's a link to an example of the 'mezzo' violin by the Queen of taptones, Carleen Hutchins.  It is what it is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFpotm9eORI

 

[David Burgess]

9 minutes ago, Dr. Mark said:

Here's a link to an example of the 'mezzo' violin by the Queen of taptones, Carleen Hutchins.  It is what it is...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFpotm9eORI

 

Them folks ain't never been my customer base, or payed my bills. Not that I don't semi-enjoy that sort of music from time to time. 

[Marty Kasprzyk]

I've been part of many double blind tests where the group of listeners and several good players didn't know the identities of the violins that were being tried.  I was always surprised how much the listeners and players disagree in their evaluations.

I've also noticed that violin makers often strongly disagree about the usefullness of "plate tuning" to certain mode frequencies and other plate measurements such as weight, stiffness, and impedance.

Shop owners, auction houses, and insurance appraisers also often don't agree on the value of violins. 

From these observations I've concluded that everybody associated with violins are very disagreeable people.

 

[Sean Couch]

1 hour ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

…From these observations I've concluded that everybody associated with violins are very disagreeable people…

 

Aye.

[Don Noon]

5 hours ago, Dr. Mark said:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFpotm9eORI

 

5 hours ago, David Burgess said:

 Not that I don't semi-enjoy that sort of music from time to time. 

Yarrrggh!  "Fiddle tunes" with a music stand!   What they are trying to play is the sort of music I mostly listen to, but certainly not THAT!

 

[Jacobus Drainer]

30 minutes ago, Don Noon said:

Yarrrggh!  "Fiddle tunes" with a music stand!  

What I semi-enjoyed was her speed reading starting around 5:30  

[David Burgess]

12 hours ago, Don Noon said:

Yarrrggh!  "Fiddle tunes" with a music stand! 

It's OK, because the music stand is just to hang the fiddle on when she's holding a beer with both hands.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

On 12/5/2025 at 7:19 AM, Johnnyguru said:

Thanks,

what advice would you give for balancing belly and back plates? 

The 2017 Bilbao project (https://www.bele.es/en/making-tops-backs/) did a very careful experiment where combinations of three impedance tops and three different impedance backs.

They made great effort to ensure the top plates were made with identical spruce wood and identical maple wood for the backs and the main variable was the thickness of the plates which determined the plate's stiffness, weight, mode 2 and 5 frequencies, and their resultant impedances (pliant, medium, resistant).  All kinds of tests were done to determine the effects of these various impedance combinations.  See the two Bilbao attachements.

Unfortunately this study didn't address the common problem of getting consistant results with woods having inconsistant properties.  Personally I thinks this is hopeless but not serious problem and attached is my old 2018 summary of different plate thinning strategies.

 

Developping_methodologies_to_correlate_p.pdf https:::acta-acustica.edpsciences.org:articles:aacus:pdf:2025:01:aacus240069.pdf plate thin strat.pdf

[Dr. Mark]

16 hours ago, Sean Couch said:

18 hours ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

…From these observations I've concluded that everybody associated with violins are very disagreeable people…

 

Aye.

You, Mr. Couch, are a man of subtlety and deemed worthy.

[Anders Buen]

In Martys given plate working strategies, they are all related.  The thickness, the plate weight, the impedance, the tap tones and the stiffness are all related fairly closely. Does not address the distribution of thicknesses, but still. I guess the stop criterion may differ for the different strategies, and may turn out to be the main influencing factors.

If you work with larger datasets of these input parameters for violin plates, it is quite easy to see these more or less close correlations. 

[edd]

Well, I figured someone sooner or later might refer to this, so might as well be me.

Jon Mangum, self confessed maker of "fiddles", did a couple of videos on tuning, both tapping to identify the nodes with the free app Audacity, then set the plate on a speaker, used a tone generator and read the tea leaves. Does this work? No idea, but when I attempt my first fiddle, I'll be doing that, because it looks like fun!

[Dr. Mark]

5 hours ago, Anders Buen said:

The thickness, the plate weight, the impedance, the tap tones and the stiffness are all related fairly closely

Given that when the physical dimensions are essentially the same, the material is essentially the same, the arching is essentially the same - correlations are no surprise.  If a subset are differentiated from the others by some parameter such as thickness or distribution of thicknesses, it seems some consistent effect on tone would be the norm and allow some control.  Whether that change is even noticeable would be the principle question.  Mr. Kasprczyk's reply suggests measurable but not significant.

later:  that has to be 'principle question', not 'principal question' so I changed it.  As a principle question it's equivalent to a primary question, which is principally not a question about 'principal', even though it is.  Ha!

[Don Noon]

1 hour ago, Dr. Mark said:

If a subset are differentiated from the others by some parameter such as thickness or distribution of thicknesses, it seems some consistent effect on tone would be the norm and allow some control.  Whether that change is even noticeable would be the principal question.  Mr. Kasprczyk's reply suggests measurable but not significant.

I would be willing to bet that the very thick Cannone's taptones would be vastly different from a good Strad. And (at least to my ear) the Cannone sounds significantly different from a good Strad.  I'm sure they also have a different feel when playing them.

So, while certain (possibly measurable) aspects of a violin's character may correlate with things like thickness, weight, taptone, etc., I dare anyone to find correlation to whether the result is good or not.  

On a related note:  I have gone through my build data of a few dozen instruments and could not find a significant correlation between the plate taptones and even the simplest of the measurable properties of the assembled instruments (B mode frequencies)... for whatever reason.  And the ones that turned out the best did not differ from the rest in any measurable way during build-up.