Violin Forum/Message Board

FiddleDoug · Member Joined: 08 Sep 2007 Posts: 227 Location: Hilton, NY

Michael, Sorry to have ruffled your feathers, but I think that I'm dealing with a whole different clientele than you are. Most of my clients are local fiddlers and students, who choke if they look at a $400 estimate. I don't disagree that the string angle is very important for optimal performance, but my reality is that most of my clients won't consider neck resets or other costly repairs for "just a set-up". If I do have to do a neck "re-glue" or reset for other reasons, I'm very fussy about the correct neck angle.
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Michael Darnton · Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 11:25 am Post subject:

OK, so you mean not important to the customers, rather than not important to the violin. :-)

This particular thing is something I get a lot of business out of, fixing things that other shops have already "fixed". We'd have a lot more sales if my partner didn't have the habit of telling people looking for new violins that we can make their current violin work a lot better than it does, and then doing it, consistently.

In reading this thread, it reminded me of something I do with every violin: before I hear it or play it, I look at everything first, and try to figure out in my mind what it's going to sound like, what is going to be bad, what I could do to counter what I think I'm going to hear, etc. I do this based on arching and current set up, and the particular tonal habits of the violins from certain schools. I try to "know" in advance everything I can, then I'll ask the player what he's having trouble with, and listen to him play, and play the instrument myself, and grade myself on how good my predictions were.

I treat it as a learning game, to try to learn about the effects of things. Doing this every time, over the course of years, has helped me develop my understanding of what various aspects of violin construction and setup do, including based on what others have done, so that I'm more efficient and effective in things like adjustments without necessarily having had to do all the experiments myself. One interesting effect of this is that I've learned some unlikely and counter-intuitive adjustments by observing strange things that previous people whom I respect have done that have had effects I wouldn't have anticipated.
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ctviolin · Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 11:48 am Post subject:

FiddleDoug · Member Joined: 08 Sep 2007 Posts: 227 Location: Hilton, NY

Michael,
You have spoken words of wisdom. I have a fraction of the experience, and expertise that you have. My goal is is to work with my clients, and make their instrument as good as it can be, without "breaking the bank". A lot of times, the instruments end up being Grandfather's old German fiddle, that they want to make playable for the Grand Daughter. Not a lot of financial wiggle room there. I can usually make major improvements to the way the fiddle plays, and sounds, without doing major surgery. Perhaps not optimal, but it's what I have to work with.
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ctviolin · Posted: Sat May 04, 2013 12:12 pm Post subject:

Oops, I see this was covered while I was composing my reply.
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violinarius · Member Joined: 14 Dec 2007 Posts: 171

DBurns · Member Joined: 16 May 2009 Posts: 31

Do all violins have need the same string angle of 158 degrees?
Is that the angle that works best?
Do some instruments need different string angles?

Andres Sender · Posted: Tue May 07, 2013 3:58 pm Post subject:

Intersecting Michael's posts in this thread with the above questions, the answers are:

No.

Usually--i.e. on violins with decent arches and normal arching heights and thicknesses.

Yes.

Wink

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DBurns · Member Joined: 16 May 2009 Posts: 31

[quote="Andres Sender"]Intersecting Michael's posts in this thread with the above questions, the answers are:

No.

Usually--i.e. on violins with decent arches and normal arching heights and thicknesses.

Yes.

Wink

[/quote]

Thanks.
Do you know if the string angle is also based on a players preference?

Michael Darnton · Posted: Wed May 08, 2013 6:29 am Post subject:

Since string angles change tone, the sensible answer would be that players would prefer different things. However, my experience is that if you hit it right, everyone likes the result. That's a general tendency with a lot of adjustment issues: if you don't get everything perfect, and players have to choose, then of course they will have preferences of what bad things they're willing to accept. If you get it perfect, they don't have too much to say about it, and no one complains about perfect.

Though players have different styles, basically good players want mostly the same thing. If you give them a wide range of tonal and volume choices that they can access easily, yet not crush, what else is there? That's why the really expensive stereo stuff doesn't have equalizer or tone controls: what can be better than right, for someone who knows what "right" is?
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