For Posterity, before they go away.

[duane88]

Ulbrich-Tatter, with "Ulbrich" marked through. About to lose it's 3 bass bars.

[Mark Norfleet]

Bass, tenor and soprano…

 

[Coo von Turra]

How did it sound, before? 

[Brad Dorsey]

…and let us know how it sounds after.  I have had two of those, but I didn’t set them up.

[Jeny Mahon]

Awww, I know that fiddle!  

[Christine Meyer]

I don't know, there's so many instruments with one regular bass bar, would one those not do? Should we not leave these oddities be?

[HoGo]

They appear to be carved in... right through the knot on the bass side of top! Cool.

[Gtone]

How many piece top is that?can't work it out.

Anyone seen the patent? Hempel...

[Brad Dorsey]

It looks like the diagonal “joints” might actually be just scratched lines, but the long parallel joints appear to be real.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

1 hour ago, Brad Dorsey said:

It looks like the diagonal “joints” might actually be just scratched lines, but the long parallel joints appear to be real.

The diagonal lines reverse on the top and back views and are in the same position which suggests that they are joints not scratches.

The joints are also alternated and staggerd to avoid weak directions. 

[GeorgeH]

7 hours ago, Christine Meyer said:

Should we not leave these oddities be?

I would think so, particularly if it is the personal work of an individual maker.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

A thin plate with a multitude of braces (bass bars) can be made lighter in weight but stiffer than a solid thicker plate.

This is a similar effect of an arched plate vs. a flat plate.

 

[Brad Dorsey]

8 hours ago, Christine Meyer said:

…Should we not leave these oddities be?

The owners get to make that decision.

If you want to ensure that one is preserved, you should buy one and donate it to a museum that will agree to preserve it forever.

[MANFIO]

Perhaps to avoid deformation?

 

[Altgeiger]

2 hours ago, Brad Dorsey said:

The owners get to make that decision.

And we get to criticize it for free, which has many advantages!

[Deo Lawson]

Maybe this violin would sound great with octave strings. With all those bass bars one would hope it has a lot of bass.

[GeorgeH]

7 hours ago, Brad Dorsey said:

The owners get to make that decision.

Yes, they do, but there are also some luthiers who will refuse to do such work, including modifications like re-graduating a maker’s original work.

Funny that when somebody proposes re-varnishing an old trade Mittenwald violin with an ugly utterly-failed varnish it is viewed by some as a desecration, but something like this doesn’t seem to raise an eyebrow. 

Funny.

 

[Hempel]

The U.S. patent filing is 1.3 pages of descriptive text, and one additional page with a figure.  My recommendation is to leave the instrument unmolested, even though bass bars are generally regarded as "consumables."

Samuel Ulbrich and Gustav Tatter filed essentially the same patent in several countries including Austria, France, & Switzerland.  Ulbrich died young at age 33, about 3 years after the patent was filed.  In 1910 Gustav Tatter identified himself as a violin maker.  By 1920 he identified himself as a tailor, continuing in the garment industry for decades afterwards.

In short, Ulbrich-Tatter apparently wasn't in the violin business very long.

 

US-0897036-A_I.pdf

[Don Noon]

6 hours ago, Deo Lawson said:

Maybe this violin would sound great with octave strings. With all those bass bars one would hope it has a lot of bass.

Funny thing about a "bass bar"... it actually gives less bass.  But at least it's playable with a bass bar.

[Don Noon]

10 hours ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

The diagonal lines reverse on the top and back views and are in the same position which suggests that they are joints not scratches.

The joints are also alternated and staggerd to avoid weak directions. 

Yes, I agree.  There are also slight offsets in the grain at the diagonal joints, but overall matched up amazingly well.

I can't figure out why the top would be assembled this way out of so many strips, with great effort and care... yet they couldn't find a piece without a knot, and did such a hachet job on the bars.  Probably some hare-brained idea that continuous long grain was a bad thing.

[Marty Kasprzyk]

The two smaller bass bars are on top or parallel to the typical B1- node lines so I doubt they affect the lower pitch sounds of this violin.  But they might boost the high frequency end.

The conventional single bass bar is named "bass bar" because it is on the bass side of the violin strings but I believe it actually helps boost the high frequency treble side acoustic output rather than the lower bass side's sound. 

[Don Noon]

2 hours ago, Marty Kasprzyk said:

The conventional single bass bar is named "bass bar" because it is on the bass side of the violin strings but I believe it actually helps boost the high frequency treble side acoustic output rather than the lower bass side's sound. 

It not only does that slightly, but primarily keeps the bass from getting too boomy and unplayably wolfy.  From a dozen years ago:

https://maestronet.com/forum/index.php?/topic/330870-bass-bars/page/13/#findComment-639090

[Lisa Chamberlain]

Why remove what makes it unique and special? Why not work with it and emphasize its unique qualities with a creative setup and find a player to respect its differences?  Why not respect the maker and let others learn from it? Maybe a violin makers school would want an example? I’m guessing it wasn’t that expensive that a museum might have been interested also. 
I will add one of these to my bucket list of odd violins to try to find and learn from. I guess there’s one less now. 

[Don Noon]

12 minutes ago, Lisa Chamberlain said:

Why remove what makes it unique and special? Why not work with it and emphasize its unique qualities with a creative setup and find a player to respect its differences?  Why not respect the maker and let others learn from it? 

While this fiddle is more interesting than "the usual", it is still a crackpot inventor's thing, and I'd bet a resored "the usual" would have a far better performance outcome than trying to update this mutant.

I'd slap it back together as-is and hang it on the wall as a historical curiosity, perhaps string it up once to verify that it's not worth putting any more effort into trying to make something decent out of it.

Interesting that the patent is primarily about "benefits" of slicing the wood into strips and re-joining them, and almost nothing about the bass/mid/treble bars.

[Lisa Chamberlain]

1 hour ago, Don Noon said:

While this fiddle is more interesting than "the usual", it is still a crackpot inventor's thing, and I'd bet a resored "the usual" would have a far better performance outcome than trying to update this mutant.

I'd slap it back together as-is and hang it on the wall as a historical curiosity, perhaps string it up once to verify that it's not worth putting any more effort into trying to make something decent out of it.

Interesting that the patent is primarily about "benefits" of slicing the wood into strips and re-joining them, and almost nothing about the bass/mid/treble bars.

I agree any usual violin could likely beat it playing usual music. So if that’s one’s goal pick one of the millions of usuals and hang it on the wall as you said. 
I’d also like to slap some strings on it to hear it though. I guess that is the magic of it being odd. Maybe it sounds like carbon fiber?  I might even like to know what it sounds like with a 5th string playing fiddle folk music with the stiffer plates.
Maybe their design wasn’t lasting perfection but perhaps 100 years later there are ideas in it that could be relooked at. Is it a way to make cheap wood sound like decent wood for student level instruments or an effort for conservation etc?