I have a short attention span, so I find the subject's endeavor both admirable and wholly unrelatable. I can relate to two things.
My parents weren't particularly wealthy. I remember as a kid when getting new shoes, I'd sleep with them next to me on the pillow. I feel fortunate to live in slightly greater abundance.
Second thing is about goal realization. About 12 years ago a photo of the Japanese coastline popped up in Reddit. I found it so striking that I made it a goal to visit, and I also set it as the wallpaper for my work computer. I've set goals for myself in the past, some of them a lot harder than this. However, the feeling of logging into the computer of a soul-deadening job, seeing the wallpaper every day, and then, after several years, finally visiting the place is unreal. It's the closest I've had to an out of body experience.
I so relate to that out of body experience. My story is different though -- 10 years ago, I was driving along the SF-LA scenic route (I forget its name). I'd rarely driven in US at that time and was brand new to the country. Suddenly I felt like I knew the route. I'd seen these underpasses before, surely? It was so surreal. I could even predict some road feature that was going to show up next.
Turns out the game Roadrash that I played as a kid had that route :)
Sounds like Route 1, which goes by a few different names. You may be lucky. They are continuing to have a difficult time keeping it open as various sections keep collapsing into the sea, at some point I imagine they’ll close sections of it permanently.
Write a book about surviving a soul-deadening job. We people on HN live on dream farms where roses are red and violets are blue, and the next wealth point is just an IPO in queue.
I'm not sure why it struck me so much, but I always suspected a large part had to do with playing so many japanese video games growing up that it felt like a place already well worn in my imagination. I think it particularly triggered a memory of when my father used to take me to CompUSA as a kid, and I'd be there taking turns playing the Dreamcast demo of Sonic the Hedgehog (timestamped link to the level: https://youtu.be/XwtNXo1aQgs?t=432).
Driving on the coast and bridge with my now wife.. unforgettable.
It's interesting they talk more about visual embellishments (aged paper, vintage looking finish) than acoustic properties. What is it about Stradivari or other hand made instruments that make them so coveted, are desirable sonic characteristics measurable and traceable to manufacturing techniques? Or is it all just halo effect?
I suspect the focus on the visuals has more to do with the journalist's perspective as a layperson than the focus of the luthiers.
My wife is a professional cellist and cello teacher, and she absolutely can tell the difference between a handmade instrument and a factory-made one. I've watched her appraise dozens of student cellos, and even though I can't hear the difference myself, I know how good an instrument is from the look on her face a few seconds into playing it. She never looks at the label or pays attention to the appearance of the body, the sound is the only thing that sets the good instruments apart for her.
As I understand it, the difference between a crafted instrument and a factory one lies in the way the creator adapts (or doesn't) to the natural grain of the wood. A handmade instrument by an expert can't be beaten by a factory process because each piece of wood resonates differently and those differences must be accounted for to get a good sound.
>As I understand it, the difference between a crafted instrument and a factory one lies in the way the creator adapts (or doesn't) to the natural grain of the wood. A handmade instrument by an expert can't be beaten by a factory process because each piece of wood resonates differently and those differences must be accounted for to get a good sound.
Violin makers have, sadly, decided to pursue a complete dead end, because of the near-universal preoccupation with old instruments. Stradivarius violins have become the platonic ideal, therefore any new violin can never be better than a close copy. Improvement of the instrument is not merely discouraged, but definitionally impossible. In blind tests, players and listeners consistently either fail to distinguish between old and new instruments or prefer modern instruments, but these findings have had essentially no impact on attitudes.
There is no Greg Smallman, Lucien Gélas or Ervin Somogyi of violins, nor will there be without significant cultural change.
"...the near-universal preoccupation with old instruments"
This, and it's actually kind of sad. There have been double-blind tests that show that Stradivarius violins are acoustically nothing special: experts cannot pick them out by sound alone, or may actually prefer other violins. One example: https://www.science.org/content/article/million-dollar-strad...
It's sort of like the crazy prices paid for paintings by "old masters". Even when the paintings are nothing special to look at. Even when the "old master" in question ran a factory, where his students did most of the painting and he just did some final touches and signed the things.
It is more complicated. Modern violins can be louder, and audience generally think loud=better, but this may not what the player prefers or what is wanted in an orchestra. There is also the issue of playing an instrument only an hour vs playing an instrument for a tour or longer time.
This is a description by one contestant who participated in the 2010 test. She generally likes that new violins can sound really good, but she criticizes:
> As for the old violins: one was a Guarneri del Gesù (circa 1740) and two were Antonio Stradivari (circa 1700 and 1715) "These violins were loaned with the stipulation that they remain in the condition in which we received them -- precluding any tonal adjustments or even changing the strings." That means that, whatever happened to the old violins during their trip -- if they got jostled on the airplane, etc. -- there was no soundpost adjustment, no bridge adjustment, no check for open seams. If the strings were a little older, they were a little older. … My concern is this: it sounds to me like the older instruments were not optimized -- by either selection or by luthier adjustments -- while the new moderns were.
There are also differences between Stradivarius. In the formal test one old Stradivarius was universally disliked and in an informal test a modern violin beat an old strad. She wonders if that was the same model:
> […] During the same event when this study took place, another more informal "study" was done by those who did this one. While jurors were deliberating over the outcome of the Indianapolis violin competition, the audience that was gathered was asked to evaluate some moderns vs. old Italians. Indianapolis Symphony Concertmaster Zach De Pue played four pairs of violins, allowing the audience to decide which they liked best of each pair, based on playing excerpts from "Scheherazade" and Strauss's 'Don Juan.' Each pair included one old and one modern violin. The votes were very close each time, but ultimately the audience chose one modern violin and three Strads, from the years 1699, 1714 and 1715. Several more tests and votes narrowed the fiddles to the one the audience liked best: Jimmy Lin's 1715 Strad. (Was that non-preferred Strad from the study in the mix? I'm guessing it was, and it was the one not-preferred).
It should be mentioned that "old" violins that are still used today have all been substantially rebuilt to accommodate later repertories. There is a lot of difference between an early Baroque violin and a late 19th century violin including the fingerboard and the type of strings, and only a few museum strads that have not been played have retained their original configuration. One benefit of the early music movement that took off in the second half of the 20th century was realising that the "old" and "original" instruments weren't actually that old or original after all, and new baroque violins had to be made from scratch to attempt to reproduce what they would have sounded back like in the 17th and 18th centuries.
It's more than that - the bass bar on modern instruments is substantially heavier, because string tension with modern wire wound strings is higher than baroque era gut strings; the older instruments are more lightly built.
The tone you get with gut strings is completely different than with modern strings - more complex, more resonances, but a modern style instrument will deaden that somewhat, you really want a period instrument to take advantage of gut strings.
>>> There have been double-blind tests that show that Stradivarius violins are acoustically nothing special: experts cannot pick them out by sound alone, or may actually prefer other violins.
This is widely acknowledged among violinists. In fact there is a growing concern that the Strads are deteriorating. The vast majority of working musicians have never handled a Strad.
I imagine some people would also derive more pleasure from knowing they're eating the last of a particular species, or walking on a floor made from the last of a particular irreplaceable forest, or racing a car that is the car that was raced in historical race of ages past, or even winning a rai stone in a game of backgammon. All exclusive experiences.
It may be that the old violins are preferred as tools because they somehow help the player achieve the same (optimal for their skill level?) sound, more easily and consistently.
Think of a car that is less effortful to drive. From external appearances, the same driving is happening either way. But inside, the “worse” car has a lot of compensating on the part of the driver, while the “better” car does not.
It’s a good hypothesis. Anecdotally though, I know a bunch of people who have experience playing both, and say that the old instruments can be difficult to play, though sound amazing when played well.
I’ve always wondered whether a violin is even a particularly good UX for making violin noises. The shape (and therefore most of the UX) is constrained in the analogue domain… but in the digital domain?
I’ve been consistently surprised to see that unlike with e.g. MIDI “keyboard controllers” (which have evolved and diverged into many different forms for different use-cases, like sequencer button pads), there is no similar experimentation in what form an “electric violin” for greenfield players could tak. Nothing like, say, an instrument played with one finger of each hand along pressure-sensitive slider pads for 4D continuous input.
I feel like, to do it right, you need to already be both
• a violinist (so that you have expertise in what sound you’re targeting, and in the existing “UX” of a violin at a professional level — in combination meaning “so you know what should be easy to play, and what should be hard-but-possible”); and also
• a luthier (so that you have expertise in what factors shape the acoustics of a violin, and the sonic space — including the “bad” parts that no violinist would ever intentionally access — that a violin can generate; and also so that you’ve given thought to the ergonomics of existing violins, so as to ensure that the new thing isn’t making them worse.)
Such a person is likely to have spent their career thinking more about music than about industrial design, though, so I wouldn’t expect such a person to have too many thoughts on a novel violin UX on their own.
So this would likely be at least a two-person project: one person who knows UX/HCI/IdX + hardware engineering, to design and prototype the device; and someone who knows violins, to be that designer-engineer’s critic and internal customer.
I am only one of those people, so as much as I’d like to try this, it’s not the easiest project to pop off the ideas heap.
I think this is what most people who’ve considered this idea from one side or the other would say — which is probably why it hadn’t been done yet.
You also need a generous and patient investor. ;-)
It's being done. There are people who are researching novel ergonomics and designs for instruments. I don't know of one working on the violin specifically, but certainly viola and double bass. Here's one:
And in the world of double basses, there's enough variation that players do choose basses that fit their bodies. For instance my bass has sloping shoulders that probably affect tone and volume, but that allow me to play with better posture. And designs have changed over the past few centuries. Older basses with super long necks get shortened.
I've also read about a piano professor who's researching pianos with narrower keys, for players with smaller hands, and has discovered that even players with big hands prefer it, who'd-a guessed?
Given the fact that a player has to adapt their technique without taking themselves out of competition for gigs, or getting injured, before even finding out if something is an improvement, maybe a realistic rate of change is pretty close to the actual rate of change.
Different materials are being explored. There have already been start-ups making carbon fiber double basses.
I'm both a musician and a technologist, but I have to admit that I separate those two activities for the most part. I do technology all day, and playing music is my escape from ... user interfaces. Many musicians arrive at the point where they say: Time to stop chasing gear, and start playing music.
> Given the fact that a player has to adapt their technique without taking themselves out of competition for gigs, or getting injured, before even finding out if something is an improvement, maybe a realistic rate of change is pretty close to the actual rate of change.
To be honest, I wasn’t picturing an instrument that improved the ergonomics of violin-playing for existing violinists — but rather an instrument that would massively decrease the difficulty of playing a violin for inexperienced players. Something that would let an audio engineer put a quick realistic violin solo into a piece, without hiring an actual violinist.
As a guitar and bass player one thing that is rarely talked about is that every individual instrument with its particular sweetspots creates a feedback cycle with the player.
That means even if two instruments are capable of theoretically producing the same sounds, it can feel fundamentally different to get there as an instrumentalist, thus each instrument has a character that goes beyond just sound. This is an especially critical point if you are improvising.
This is btw. also why many electrical guitarists insist on loudly cranked amps: the feedback that developes between speaker and guitar allows you to play the guitar differently as each note will sustain longer (or even grow in volume as you let go).
> She never looks at the label or pays attention to the appearance of the body, the sound is the only thing that sets the good instruments apart for her.
This kind of study/comparison really needs better blinding.
While not the same thing, as an example, blind auditions for orchestras really changed the demographics of who got selected.
> However, after adopting ‘blind hiring’ techniques, the TSO saw an increase of women being admitted from 25% to 46%.
>"We find that [violin soloists] generally prefer new violins over Stradivaris, consider them better-projecting, and are no better than players at telling new and old apart."
Ugh. I hate it when the playwright comes to shows. They always have opinions.
Their work is over. The words are set. Now let me do my job, figuring out how to say them and how to move. It's between me and the director. We're the ones who can see the set, know the other actors, feel what the audience is responding to.
One thing I love about doing Shakespeare: he's very sparing with stage directions. He lets the words speak for themselves. Often, they suggest how I should sound, when I should be silent, how to move. But he rarely enforces an action on me. And even better... because he's dead, he's not going to come at us if we cut something we don't like, or rearrange.
Modern playwrights love to tell me when to take a (beat). Guys... you wrote the words. I'll figure out how fast to say them. You did your job. Now stay home and let me do mine.
This comment comes across as arrogant and dismissive of authors. Maybe this is a common attitude in theater but it doesn't come across as very collaborative from the outside.
It was intended to come off as exaggerated for humor, but clearly that didn't convey. I'm sorry for that.
That said... most of the time, playwrights aren't supposed to collaborate with actors. It's not a one-to-one interaction. The playwright writes, makes it available through a service like Samuel French, and has no connection with the actual performances.
They may collaborate with actors and directors during the writing process. That's a different thing from the ordinary work of an actor.
Actors collaborate a lot -- with each other, with the director, with the lights and sound and tech and props. Adding one more voice -- even that of the playwright -- often makes it worse, rather than better.
In particular (switching to my director's hat rather than my actor's hat), it is important that I be the final word on the show. That sounds arrogant, and of course it is, but in a conventional theater process the director's job is to keep all of the other artists working together. That's what makes it look like a finished, cohesive work, rather than a collection of individual performances.
A common faux pas in theatrical circles is for a writer to bypass the director and give directions to the actors. That is very much a no-no. Actors work together, not as individuals, and a writer telling an actor something different from what the director tells them gives the work a disjointed feeling. If a writer has notes, they go to the director -- who has to be free to ignore them.
Writers, of course, chafe at this. And it's worse when they don't have experience as actors or directors themselves, because they don't know how the process works.
I remember visiting a friend, while in high school (in the 1970s). He lived in a fairly exclusive area.
He showed me his electric guitar. It was unbranded, pretty plain, and beat up. Sort of a Gibson Les Paul-looking thing, made of some solid light wood. Maybe maple.
When he played it, it sounded amazing. I couldn't believe the sound came from that raggedy-ass-looking axe.
It was made by a family friend. A chap named Paul Reed Smith.
I was only ever a mediocre cellist (Suzuki book 7) but my sister was legit good and won a scholarship-ish thing to borrow some hundreds-of-years-old cello worth six figures. When playing it, even I could immediately tell the difference between it and my mass-produced Yamaha.
> When playing it, even I could immediately tell the difference between it and my mass-produced Yamaha.
I would imagine the CNC milled Yamahas to have much better quality control. It's the same in horology, "hand crafted" Swiss/German watches are valued over precision cut assembly line Seikos even though the Seiko complications are magnitudes more accurate and reliable than the Swiss ones.
It's closer to a difference between mass retail and tailor fitted clothes. Big vendors have great quality control too, but it's not the robustness of the stitch or uniformity of color that's important here.
"Quality control" doesn't tell you what standard they have for acceptable, just that such a standard exists.
I've heard that it is quite straightforward with modern tools to make new violins which pass a blind test against a Stradivarius — I wouldn't know myself — but that doesn't mean those with a target price of £500 are actually made to this standard.
I could see differences due to materials. Wood is not uniform product, so picking the right section for right part might do something minor. Metal is metal and we get very exact and uniform properties with modern manufacturing.
Now maybe we could question why have we not come up with anything better for these wood instruments? Like some mixture of plastic?
I’ve watched a few YouTube videos of people with their eyes covered listening to acoustic guitars, and they try to pick which one is more expensive. Some after a few picks can even tell the brand and model. It’s pretty remarkable.
Indeed. I've heard that certain acoustic guitar makers are starting do certain types of scientific analyses of the wood they buy for the guitar body to ascertain how it will behave, I wonder if there is any work being done in the violin community to quantify the behavior of their instruments. If anyone knows of an equivalent of Zollner's Physics of the Electric Guitar[0] for violins please share!
The guitar maker I know knocks on the raw soundboard and listens very close to the response. He can tell how it will sound in a guitar and how the guitar has to be built to support this particular soundboard and wanted characteristics of the guitar. (There are a lot of variables)
He explained the difference in the knock response, and as musicians we could hear the difference too.
It is called tap tuning and violin makers have been doing it for years. We don't know what Stradivarius, but nobody would be surprised by the claim that he was doing the same thing when making his violins.
There is however a lot of debate in the luthier community on if it actually matters. Some claim it does and spend a lot of time on it, and have even setup fancy test fixtures to show patterns with different frequencies. However some claim it makes no difference and [I'm not sure what]. Both produce great instruments.
They are like an 18th century Japanese katana. The masters were unparalleled at creating revered quality. They would be my first choice in collecting. Tho, if my life depended on it, I'd take a blade crafted with modern technology.
But you would be (half) wrong. Modern metalurgy trounces 10000 times folded, quenched in ancient fire. Modern shaping techiques are better and we can achieve a lighter, more flexible and tough blade. The issue is we dont. There is no reason to. Nobody is trusting their life to a katana today. so very few quality ones are made anymore. they are now more a symbol than a tool.
There's actually lots of research on that topic, if you search for "Stradivarius blind listening" on Google Scholar you'll find some. Can't recommend a specific article unfortunately, but it's an interesting topic. My current understanding is that there is no perceptual difference that has been proven, and even later models are blindly judged to be better.
> What is it about Stradivari or other hand made instruments that make them so coveted, are desirable sonic characteristics measurable and traceable to manufacturing techniques? Or is it all just halo effect?
It 90% halo effect.
However, the wood, in particular, for the Stradivarii came from forests that had suffered droughts and was quite a bit denser than expected for that species.
That having been said, wood degrades. It doesn't matter if you put magic varnish on it or not. Wood ages nicely in instruments for about 10 years. Then it's good for about 50 years. After 50 it starts noticably degrading, and the more heavily used the more it degrades.
You will note that the Strads are long past the point that the wood is "good". People who play violins can tell. However, nobody involved in a "blind" test is going to slag violins that might be Strads--that would be bad for their reputation.
Ironically, those Strads aren't completely original, either. They have been repaired to various degrees over the years, given more modern bridges, etc. So, we get a Ship of Theseus argument.
As for modern handmade violins, the top ones are easily as good or even better than Strads. Strads may have been "magic" in the 1700s and 1800s, but we have really good control of things, better measurement, better analysis, better materials, etc. in the modern era.
Luthierie in the 2000s is still art, but it's got a lot of science backing it up nowadays.
We can argue whether artificial aging an instrument is a bad thing or not.
But I hope we can all agree that such kind of passion and drive in a young person is a very nice thing to see. Especially now when many kids are only interested in quick tik tok style of entertainment and rarely show an urge to do something hard on their own. Or I'm just looking with middle aged eyes and it was always a rare thing for a kid to be really passionate about something.
> Or I'm just looking with middle aged eyes and it was always a rare thing for a kid to be really passionate about something.
I'd say that most of the time passion is killed in the egg by parents without them noticing by the lack of support (buying a book, materials), interest or attention ("I don't have time to look at what you made") or just plain shunning. Outside big cities, pre-internet time, lack of available knowledge or place to get it can also be a big problem.
School also play a role, even if just by robbing kids of most of their free time. The corporate-like schedule which is incompatible with reading a book from cover to cover in one go is why I didn't read much fiction at the time.
> The corporate-like schedule which is incompatible with reading a book from cover to cover in one go is why I didn't read much fiction at the time
I read books like crazy when I was younger, I loved to read
School did everything it possibly could to make sure I stopped enjoying it though, and sure enough by the time my Grade 12 literature class was done with me it had finally bludgeoned out the last enjoyment of reading I had
It took me a long time to realize that a lot of book studies, film studies, really any media studies, is just snobbery and not worth a damn. It's better to just enjoy what you enjoy
Yeah, it always was. The "kids these days, with their" part of the complaint has always been the same, it's only the next words that have changed through the ages.
Remembering my childhood peer group, I definitely don't remember many kids exhibiting this kind of passion for anything.
I was surprised to find no mention whatsoever about the tonal qualities of her instruments. The antiquing process may appeal to her target buyer; but most serious contemporary luthiers don’t engage in the practice. The instruments she’s making are not cheap; but they are by no means expensive in the world of bowed instruments. But an article about violin-making that doesn’t once touch on the tonal outcome is strange indeed.
Indeed, I'm a double bassist, and belong to a family of string players. I don't want an antiqued instrument. I'll age it myself. Most of the deliberately antiqued instruments I've handled were student models, and I wonder if it makes it easier to hide minor defects in workmanship. In those cases, we didn't outright reject an instrument for being antiqued, since there are only so many things you can be particular about before the supply of acceptable instruments dries up. We were much more concerned with sound. When my kids moved up to professional grade instruments, like you say, no more antiquing.
Some proponents of artificial aging claim that it can improve the tone or resonance of an instrument over time, simulating the effects of natural aging on wood and other materials.
“Oh cool violin! Looks like it has a lot of history?”
“Nah it was actually made in 2022 and that’s a made up name on a fake label lol”
Sorry if I come across as ignorant but scratching something with pasta and using yellowed book pages to give it an artificially aged look is dishonest, especially for a $18k object made by a skilled artisan. I’m sure it looks and plays great in its mint form.
This part also rubbed me the wrong way. Synthetic aging techniques kill the appeal of the craft of creating a truly genuine, exquisite instrument.
It seems like what a cheap knock off manufacturer would do.. imagine if McLaren did this, what, just scuffing up the door handle with an old key. Outlandish and backwards, haha.
Or perhaps our repulsion reveals how unrefined and plebeish our opinions are on this topic, which is still kind of hilarious but also unfortunate, because it means a group of folks has effectively settled on preferring their McLaren with the intentional scratches.
Synthetic aging... there's quite a lot of this going on in the guitar world. On the purely cosmetic level, you can find a lot of 'relic' electric guitars, made to look like they've been on the road since the 60s. Some acoustic makers are experimenting with torrefaction and other techniques to age the top wood, and opinions are divided on whether this makes any difference.
But I'm just a pleb here... if an instrument feels good to play and sounds good, then that'll do!
Cosmetic ageing processes are broadly regarded as distasteful amongst collectors and connoisseurs, but there's clearly a market for it.
Torrefaction (or rather an optimised heat treatment process) can undoubtedly produce clear acoustic benefits. Suitable thermal treatment can significantly increase the stiffness and reduce the damping coefficient of wood, resulting in a more acoustically efficient material.
In some sense car manufacturers do do this - their designs are famous for being full of functionally empty retro cues that customers nonetheless go for.
This kind of artificial aging is an official thing in electric guitar market - typically called road worn. And it's done by Fender or Gibson, not just some obscure brands. There are also signature lines which are more ot less exact copies of guitars played by famuous musicians. For instance you can buy Malcolm Young Gretsch with empty pickup sockets, just like how Malcolm modified his own guitar.
So some people love to have an instrument that looks like it's not new, even if it is.
Instinctively I find this absurd too. I always thought it was funny that, at least at the level of student instruments, the more you spend, the more beaten-up your new instrument looks. Basic ones have an even spray varnish (which I generally quite like). My slightly better* Chinese factory instrument is antiqued to the extent of having a more worn-looking patch where the hand rests when playing in higher positions, as if to suggest decades of performance as a soloist. It's nonsense.
But plainly people do like this and makers do make it. See e.g. the instruments at https://www.myluthier.co/category/violins (I can't afford to shop there, I just picked it because they have pretty preview images) which stand as quite good evidence against any suggestion that "reputable luthiers would never". Yes at some point you just have to make a living, but there's enough skill put into it to suggest there might be something more artistically interesting going on as well. The results are certainly quite personal.
There are practical arguments for antiquing. It's kind of handy when you're playing in an ensemble: from a distance my cello looks basically the same as the others around me in the orchestra even though some of them are a century older and genuinely quite harshly used. And you never have the pain of getting the first obvious scratch or chip in a pristine instrument.
Curiously this doesn't seem to be a very new practice either - I think even 150 years ago, new instruments were being turned out designed to look like much older ones.
* Sounds and plays better, not just cost a bit more. I didn't choose it for the antiquing!
Yep, it's dishonest. But it looks good... It meets visual expectations... And I'm sure it helps the product off the shelf. Write ups in the NYT are quite useful too!
And I thought it was all about sound. She probably has a tiktok account too!
Yeah sounded weird to me as well, but I’m guessing in the violin market it’s the expected look and she will have a hard time selling to consumers if she doesn’t.
I came here to post the same, a self aware artisan wouldn't spend extra time making it look older than it is. that makes me question every other design choice as well, was it thought through at all or was it just simply repeating what was learned...
What a violin is supposed to look like and how that affects price is interesting. As a violinist with a particular interest in old music I think it's sad how little diversity there is in violins. There's really only a couple of models that all luthiers build and those models all look similar to the untrained eye. In medieval, renaissance and baroque periods there was a lot more variability.
Aside from some experimental luthiers everyone builds the same style of violin because there's an assumption that if you're deviating from that form (e.g. cornerless violins such as the Chanot model, or baroque style piecrust violins) you must be sacrificing sound quality. And if you decorate your violin, it must be that it didn't sound good enough and you need to make it look good instead to sell it (strangely, as you mentioned, artificially making the violin look older is exempt... probably because it makes them fit in with the uniformity of classical violin)
The best sounding violins I've had were all a bit ... crooked. The simple reason is that being slightly asymmetric really hurts the value of a violin, even if the sound is fine. As a hobby musician I don't really care and am not ashamed of having a violin that looks a little "off" when close up. If you're not playing professionally this, or buying from upcoming luthiers who still have to make a name for themselves are good ways to find good-value buys.
Do any string instrument players here have opinions about the differences between wooden and carbon fiber violins, violas, cellos, etc.? I’ve watched some YouTube videos comparing them, and I can’t hear the difference. I imagine the sound and response might seem very different, though, to the performer.
They're OK enough as a travel instrument, but they don't sound particularly great because no manufacturer has taken composite technologies seriously. They're using archaic manufacturing methods (wet layup and vacuum bag) that produces a composite with too much resin - more plastic than carbon. They cannot properly control the acoustic properties of the material, because they can't control the material period.
If you see the a high-gloss finish and a characteristic woven pattern, you're looking at a showpiece rather than a serious instrument. That's not what a high-performance composite looks like - you should expect to see the satin finish and linear "grain" of unidirectional pre-preg. I'm yet to see that on any musical instrument.
What does satin/gloss finish have to do with anything? That's a choice made at the finishing stage as to what clear coat to put on it for uv protection and scratch resistance. And while uni might be appropriate for parts of the violin, you still need to orient plys in multiple axis for flexural strength, so you might as well do some of that on the outer cosmetic layer to make the product more appealing to consumers.
Viscoelastic polymers are poison for stringed instruments, because they have very high damping coefficients. They turn the precious vibrational energy from the strings into useless heat. Only cheap mass-produced instruments are finished in polyurethane; quality instruments of traditional wood construction use a shellac-based finish (sometimes nitrocellulose lacquer on guitars), which have lower damping and can be applied more thinly in practice. In the context of high-quality instruments, the difference is not subtle.
Wood instruments need a finish to protect them against moisture, but that isn't an issue for CFRP. Any finish - especially the kind of thick finish you need to get a high gloss over woven reinforcement - makes the instrument worse for no benefit other than cosmetics. If you would choose a shiny instrument over one that sounds better, you're buying a showpiece rather than a serious musical instrument.
Epoxy is a necessary evil in CFRP, but we want the absolute highest possible fiber volume ratio. Unidirectional or spread-tow reinforcement will always allow for a higher fiber ratio than woven material.
Passion is wonderful; I'd just like to point out a 2nd or 3rd order effect: often a startup starts up and everybody is passionate, but with growth some new hires are less passionate than others. The situation to avoid is having an ipo where very passionate people discover more mercenary people had much higher option allocations.
pretty interesting how she found such an esoteric craft as her passion at such a young age. I love reading stories about people who are obsessed with their craft.
