All Technical articles – Page 13
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FocusWhat can we learn from CT-scanning the ‘Messiah’?
In 2016 the ‘Messiah’ Stradivari was the subject of an extensive CT scanning project. Francesco Piasentini and Gregg Alf examine the resulting data, discovering repair work in the neck, and attempt to determine how it had originally been set
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FocusWhat to do if your violin bow won’t tighten or loosen
Korinthia Klein presents a simple player’s guide to violin maintenance, without encroaching on luthiers’ territory
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FocusTips for changing your violin strings
Korinthia Klein presents a simple player’s guide to violin maintenance, without encroaching on luthiers’ territory
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Premium ❘ FeatureBasic Maintenance: Avoiding instrument carnage
Luthiers often see the same basic problems when repairing instruments – and most of them could be solved by some simple care and attention from the players themselves. Korinthia Klein presents a simple guide to violin maintenance, without encroaching on the experts’ territory
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Premium ❘ FeatureTrade Secrets: Making a partial plaster cast
A useful restoration method that can be used when a full cast is unnecessary
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Premium ❘ FeatureMaking Matters: Making fingerboards green
With speculation rife that ebony might soon be added to the CITES index of forbidden woods, Alan Beavitt shares his method for creating a fingerboard using veneers rather than full blocks of the wood
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Premium ❘ FeatureFrom the Archive: January 1911
The weights of a Stradivari violin’s plates are revealed for the first time, although modern readers will likely be left none the wiser
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Premium ❘ FeatureTrade Secrets: Preparing an instrument for varnishing
A guide to the steps needed for the final coat of varnish to show up to its best effect
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Premium ❘ FeatureMaking Matters: All laid out in black and white
Stradivari’s method for laying out f-holes has long been a mystery. Torbjörn Zethelius reveals the method he believes the Cremonese master may have used, and how it can still be useful today
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Premium ❘ FeatureTrade Secrets: Removing the mould after gluing the linings
A simple procedure that imitates the methods of the old Cremonese makers
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Premium ❘ FeatureMaking Matters: New angles on an old problem
David Burgess explains how he made a simple device for raising and lowering the tailpiece, to compare the differences in sound when adjusting the string angle and downforce on the bridge
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Video3 ways we can damage our instruments without even knowing it
As part of her ‘Students Stuck at Home’ series of videos, American luthier Anna Huthmaker reveals three ways in which we can damage our instruments without even knowing about it. For more in the series, click here. Watch: The oddities of a luthier’s workshop
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Premium ❘ FeatureTrade Secrets: Organic scroll carving
A method for shaping the scroll and pegbox that can give more flowing results, in line with what is seen on old instruments
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Premium ❘ FeatureMaking Matters: Why varnish matters
Ulrike Dederer reviews and summarises new research on how multilayered varnishes influence the moisture protection and vibrational properties of tonewood
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Premium ❘ FeatureThe Lost Art of Cremonese Violin Archings
The old Cremonese luthiers’ method of designing violin archings has been lost in the mists of time. Andrew Dipper uses evidence from 18th-century manuals to propose how they might have done it, through a system encompassing string lengths, internal forms… and a lot of mathematics
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VideoThree cellists test out a newly-made cello
In this video, Ian McWilliams, an instrument maker working just outside Berlin, asks three cellists (Rolando Fernandez, Martina Biondi, Mon-Puo Lee) to play a cello that he finished making in early 2020 to get a sense of its potential. They play three different pieces of music with three different bows. ...
