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Breaks are not unpredictable, they're just one of the many things we have to learn how to avoid
Short life of the string: unfortunately a common problem today. Let’s try to give it a definition so that we can understand when our strings are normally working, and we just have to accept there is a period in which they are not at their best, and when we should complain with the maker.
It is fundamental that musicians give a feedback to the maker because a QC cannot put strings in working conditions to check them, so there may be things that the maker really cannot imagine and maybe they would be easy to be solved.
An exploding string is really frustrating, but the good news is that very often it is something we can fix visiting our violin maker and having him check the instrument so that everything is very smooth.
It may also be responsibility of the string maker of course, but when this is the case the string had so big defects that you could probably have noticed before, as shown in this post:
What to check and what to avoid when you are choosing your strings. The most important thing to check is that the twisting of your string is even in the whole vibrating lenght. No white spots, no open twist, no different angles. You can easily feel those by Mersenne’s test. What is less important is the
Read MoreWhen it is really something we cannot help, we can only complain with the maker and ask him for some replacements.
If possible ask for replacements of a different period of production. The bad news here is that there is very little a string maker can do in these cases, apart from throwing away most of the production. The problem is on the side of the slaughter house, and they normally don’t allow people there to check their process...
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baroque music, double-bass strings, early music, gut strings, gut strings history, gut strings maintenance, gut strings manufacture, viol strings, viola da gamba strings, viola strings, violin strings, violoncello strings
That’s me , or at least this is what I was in Aquila from 2002 up to 2016… On gauge imposed on a string by the polishing process… why half polished are definitely better and why the quality control and the polishing must be done by the same person. Want to know more? There’s a
Read MoreWhat can we do to have longer lasting strings? So many factors determine the length of the life of the strings, but if you look at them one at a time, you will find that it is quite easy to understand what’s wrong and what we can improve. Often it’s something we can improve straight
Read MoreWhat shall we look in paintings Pictures from an exhibition in Venaria Reale, Torino (Italy), of restaured masterpieces from Renaissance. I loved that “soft” string…
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