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Making Matters: Comparing volume of air within the violin soundbox

2026-07-31T08:48:00

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John Waddle and Steve Sirr use CT scanning to examine how the amount of air inside a violin soundbox varies between the works of several early Cremonese makers

The ‘internal corpus’ is our term for the volume of air contained within a violin’s soundbox. Although unseen, it is an extremely important functional part of all bowed stringed instruments. Since 2005, using multiple medical X-ray CT scanners, we have determined the sizes, shapes and internal corpus volumes (ICV) of 26 bowed stringed instruments crafted by the Amati family, Antonio Stradivari, Guarneri ‘del Gesù’ and Domenico Montagnana…

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