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When I suggest roughly polished strings instead of smooth heavily polished ones, I often receive a squint like I am interfering with personal choices on musical taste, or with technical issues of an instrument which I have never seen, let alone played.
It's always been difficult for me to explain why I am firm on this point. It has been difficult because it involves some production secrets which probably have not been shared before. They are not big secrets, but they need a bit of a technical explanation to become perfectly clear...
In this report, I finally explain why I never recommend smooth strings, and why I think there is always a better solution than that, even when you think you are an exception.
Ps: the responsibility of all the drawings is entirely on my shoulders, including the Merry Bunny dancing in the equisetum field.
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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
Why I don’t like varnished strings: Maybe if you live in a very humid place, like Vietnam or Japan, it looks like this is the only solution. It may be true in fact if you want to buy a “ready to use” string.But if you have the patience of organizing your olive oil process and
Read More…the idea came to a cello player… Sometimes, you wander around the web and you find little gems which only apparently have little to do with what you were looking for. …but at a closer look… at 0’30 there are some historical pictures: note the dimensions of the factory and the name: Maillot is the actual
Read MoreThis video is amazing! It shows many “secrets”, though I could not follow it all because I cannot speak Japanese. The beginning is very istructive: the method for cutting stripes is described in Labarraque, 1823. Never seen that applied before!From the mid on I could not really understand what he is doing and why, but
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