6/12/09

Just a little bit of difference...

Causes huge difference of sound of violin.
Recently, I was feeling that my 3rd violin Guarneri del gesu copy has little bit less volume of sound. Compared to my lttle bit old violin Marengo Romanus Rinaldi(1895), I feel like my 3rd one has smaller sound...

In the past I tried to get bigger sound, I tried few things.
At first, I got an information that how to twist strings on pegs. Usually, when we equip strings, we twist strings on peg from inside to outside of pegbox. Inside of pegbox, strings look like it goes slightly outside of pegbox. This is to prevent peg’s turning back and loosing string’s tension. But according to the information which I read, when strings are twisted on pegs slightly inside of peg box, strings’ vibrations are not disturbed by anything. And they say in this way violin sounds really better. Shortly, the angle of string is the point.
I tried this. After that, hmm, sound became little bit bigger, I thought. But not enough.
Second, it was how to equip a chin rest. Even by how to put a chin rest changes sound of violin a lot (probably most violinists know it). This is often used in the instrument shops. When lower sound is too small, loosen the tension of left side leg of chin rest, tighten the other leg. When treble sound is small, do the opposite. My case, treble was small, so I did the latter method. Certainly, it was kind of effective. But still not enough.

I was wondering, is this a limit of this violin? Before I felt its sound was much more powerful. I thought there must be something.
I tried to move the position of the bridge, just in case. We cannot move a bridge toward the fingerboard nor tail piece. Because it changes length of string from nut to bridge, and it influences a playing. But anyway I tried to move bridge in these directions. But there was not much change. Suddenly I thought about move it in the direction of treble string side. The sound changed so much!! It changed astonishingly. Probably the foot of bridge was not above bass bar before. Suddenly lower sound started to sound with big vibration.
And thanks to lower sound’s volume up, treble sound became bigger and more beautiful.

There’s not much difference from the original position. Maybe 1 mm? Even with this small difference causes such a huge difference of the sound. I thought I knew this violin pretty well, but there’s still things to learn… I think there’s few things to try before we give up on our own violins ^^) (of course same for other stringed instruments) Now my 3rd violin has really powerful and beautiful sound, and it's fun to play it. The thing is... my playing ability though^^;)

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