During that week, I’ll be in New Orleans for the biennial meeting of the American Federation of Violin & Bow Makers. Together with interesting lectures on various aspects of violin expertise, the meeting will include an instrument exhibit centered around the Amati Family Workshop and their early imitators.

On Sunday, May 13th from 1:00 to 5:00 there will be a public exhibition of instruments and bows made by AFVBM members at the Hotel Monteleone. (214 Royal Street, New Orleans, Louisiana)

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The “Players Meet Makers” events take place at each AFVBM General Meeting.  It is free and open to the public and allows local string players the opportunity to try some of these great contemporary instruments and bows.  I’ll be presenting two violins for players to try.

At the same time my assistant will be in Paris visiting the musical instrument trade show - Musicora.  We’re both looking forward to see some great instruments and catching up with friends and colleagues.

The back is carved from one piece of maple. (cut on the slab) The high full arching shape, which is not discernible in the photos, is combined with a deep fluting around the edge.  I had good casts of the back and front of the original viola which was a great help in capturing the arching of the original in my copy.

This viola was made for a violist looking for a darker sound than his current instrument. One of the reasons I chose the Maggini viola as my model was because the Brescian violas are renowned for their darker sound.  Though the ‘dark Brescian  sound’ may be a slight cliche, my copy certainly has the rich and darker sound that I was looking for.

The cello needs some restoration and when we have some spare moments this year we will restore it to playable condition. Today I dusted it off and took some photographs as a first step before starting the repairs.

Once the cello is complete and adjusted to sound it’s best, we intend to loan it to young cellists in need of a good small cello.

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Above: The back (and sides) appear to be made from well figured Canadian/North American maple.

]]> http://guyharrison.com/blog/?feed=rss2&p=1637 http://guyharrison.com/blog/?p=1611 http://guyharrison.com/blog/?p=1611#comments Tue, 17 Jan 2012 14:30:13 +0000 admin http://guyharrison.com/blog/?p=1611 A study by Claudia Fritz comparing contemporary violins with Cremonese violins has been featured in various magazines and newspapers recently.  Journalist Ross Oakland from The Toronto Star called our workshop while putting together two articles published in their Sunday paper.

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The first article focuses on the psychoacoustic study by Claudia Fritz.

Link to first Toronto Star article

The second article explores the value and prices of old instruments.

Link to second Toronto Star article

A good quality well made bow makes such a difference to the sound of a good instrument.  Now I always have a selection of new and old bows for players to use when choosing an instrument and we sell the bows as well.  Many of our clients already have a few fine bows tucked in their cases. While other musicians are looking for a bow to compliment their new instrument from us.

In the last few months we’ve sold several bows by bow maker Emmanuel Begin. Emmanuel is the son of Montreal bow maker Louis Begin. After working with his father, Emmanuel continued his training in France with Yannick Le Canu and has now returned to Montreal. Both professional players and students have enjoyed the beautiful sound they can produce and how well they feel to play.  Violinist Mark Fewer talks about his new Emmanuel Begin bow purchased through us in this interview on violinist.com (link)

Emmanuel currently makes two level of bows. The best quality is priced at $3000 and the second level is $1400.  Both are worth trying and good value from this talented Canadian bow maker.

Just before Christmas I took the photo below of my assistant, Charline Dequincey, doing the finishing touches on her next viola.  The viola is based on a 17th Century instrument by Maggini.  I found several pieces of great maple that were very close in appearance to the original viola.

I’m looking forward to hear how Charline’s viola sounds and I’ll start varnishing my version of the Maggini model viola in the new year.

Having two of my violins of the same model in the workshop at the same time is unusual. It gave me the chance to compare and see in which ways they were different or similar.

Throughout the year as I complete violins in the shop, I adjust each instrument to have them sounding their best. As part of that process I think about the sound of previous violins I’ve made, other instruments I like and good Cremonese violins I’ve heard and played.

So when completing a violin  I often ask myself - is it better than the last one? A subjective question at best and even more so if the previous violin is sold and gone.

In this case the violins actually sounded very similar when listening a few meters away.  The recent violin was  finished a few weeks ago and sounded very good already.  The older 2010 violin had a slightly smoother sound and feel while playing it.   It will be interesting to see how they compare in a year from now when both violins have been played extensively.

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Above:  The back and front of the most recent violin.

At the light supply shop the owner was interested why I needed these UV lights.  After talking for sometime about violin making & varnishes he thought he could provide a better UV  light for tanning the wood and offered to run a test for me.  This was a man very passionate about lights bulbs!

So we tested how different types of light tan the wood before varnishing. I made up two sample pieces of spruce and covered part of each piece with aluminum foil. The wood under the foil would remain untanned and would be a record of how the wood looked before any UV light.  The rest would be tanned under the different UV lights.

He took a 250 watt mercury bulb, modified it by removing an outer glass covering to increase the level of UVA and UVB. (Probably something left to an expert.)

The bulb used 110 volts in a basic set-up in the basement of his light shop. I ran the same test with my standard UV lights.

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The result below was very interesting. The piece of wood on the left was in my UV light box. It did change somewhat but not a great deal. The wood on the right was under his light and is clearly tanned a light brown colour.  I’m now experimenting further with this new light.

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I did end up replacing some of the older lights in my light box, which is where all this started.  I’ve recently learnt, concerning the UV tubes I have, that their light output reduces by half after 4000 hours of use.  So I’ll probably replace the tubes every 1 -2 years  to be sure they’re working at their best and say hi to the guys at the light shop.

(photo taken by Sabine Gibbins from the Ottawa East EMC newspaper)

The donated cello was made in the workshop of Nicolas Vuillaume in Mirecourt, France around the mid 19th Century. Nicolas Vuillaume was a younger brother of the famous Jean Baptiste Vuillaume. He was born in 1800 in Mirecourt and most likely trained with his father. After which he further trained with his older brother Jean Baptiste in Paris then returned to Mirecourt to open his own workshop.

The cello needed some cleaning and extra work to update the set up for use in the orchestra. It was brought straight to our workshop. The fingerboard and bridge had been replaced in an 18th to 19th Century style for period performances, within the last twenty years.  This type of set-up wouldn’t suit the NAC orchestra. The very short fingerboard alone would limit how high a cellist could play and the repertoire he or she could perform.   We’ll begin making a longer modern fingerboard, new bridge and soundpost for the N.Vuillaume this week.

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My good colleague Kim Tipper in British Columbia and I were interviewed for this article on violin making. The writer nicely outlines some of the issues of making a fine violin today and comparing contemporary violins with older instruments.

Though there are a few errors, for example.

“Stradivarius.org reports that da Salo crafted double basses and violas that were considered the foundation for Italian violins” Not true. Credit today goes to  Andrea Amati for the early design of the violin, viola and cello. 

Link: www.ehow.com feature making-violin