Difference in fiddle bows?

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Sorcha
Date: 09 Mar 06 - 10:34 AM

OK, guys, now that Ossonflags knows all our secrets, we have to kill him! :)

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Scoville
Date: 09 Mar 06 - 10:52 AM

Wow--this is a cool thread. I don't have a clue what's going on but I'm reading it anyway in the hopes that I may someday know enough about fiddles for this to make sense.

Don't worry--I do know enough about musical instruments to believe that bows make a difference. My fiddling sounds a bit like a recently-castrated donkey but I'm sure that's 90% me and only about 7% my carbon-fiber bow (the fiddle is no work of art, either). I've only ever used the one bow but I do think it's heavy. Oddly, I reached this conclusion not because I know what I'm talking about but because, around here, heavy hammers are considered the mark of an amateur hammered dulcimer player. It made sense at the time. Ha ha.


The bow is a Coda Aspire (US $230). The fiddle came with two bows--one was too cheap to bother rehairing and the other was good but warped. Warpage is an issue around here so I went with carbon fiber since I won't be playing concerts any time in the next two decades, anyway.

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From:
Date: 09 Mar 06 - 11:01 AM

I have a number of bows including a carbon fibre bow and I love it. It wasn't a cheap bow by any means. I have a cheap wooden bow but I haven't used it for a long time as the balance point wasn't right for me. I use a good viola bow when I am playing my octave violin. I feel the instrument requires a heavier bow to do it justice. I have a beautiful wooden bow and it plays beautifully. I bought it in Holland and the assistant in the shop let me try many bows and fiddles before I bought the ones I felt worked for me.

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Bert
Date: 09 Mar 06 - 12:24 PM

..but there are no established formulas... Hmmmm, so it appears, a lot of talk, but no information, perhaps this thread belongs in the BS section;-)

I would suspect that with heavier bow, one would put the cg closer to the frog otherwise the bow would be unwieldy.

I don't think that making only ONE bow would be much good. I would want the details of several good bows and chart the differences and see if I could spot any trends. I would expect to have to make an adjustable prototype and get a few good fiddlers to try it out before settling on a particular design.

If I found that specific users liked different things then I would have to come up with a way of defining what a particular user likes and making just that.

So folks, just for fun, post the details of your best & worst bow here and say which is which of course and we'll see what we can do.

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Pauline L
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 12:42 PM

Slightly off topic: Does anyone know why the bottom part of the bow is called the "frog"?

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Grab
Date: 15 Mar 06 - 03:32 PM

My singing teacher started life as a violinist. She's just recently been out to get a new violin, at a slightly snobby music shop in Cambridge. They started taking her seriously when she said "Whichever violin I get, I'm having this bow too". Said bow was carbon fibre and cost £1k...

So she was showing it off, and let me have a go on it. Now I'm not a very good violinist (or fiddler either), but that bow was amazing. For all the talk of "character" above, I'm not totally convinced. As far as I'm concerned, the key quality of a bow (or any part of a musical instrument) is that it does what you want with minimum effort. If it feels like there's no interposing hardware between you and the music, it's a good bit of kit. And that's how that bow was. It was so light that most of your energy was used in moving your hand, and perfectly balanced.

I'm with Bert on this. This carbon fibre bow was made by some bloke in Europe who makes them individually by hand, hence the vast prices. But carbon fibre is actually the perfect material for mass-producing - if he's cracked the structure of the "perfect bow" and got a set of moulds, then the only thing stopping him mass-producing thousands of these bows a year is (a) artificial scarcity maintaining his income, and (b) the stuck-in-the-mud conservatism which infests the instrument business. If he did sell his bow for $200 by mass-producing, you can guarantee no "serious" player would buy it - it's obviously too cheap to be good quality, right...? IMO, I reckon the early starters in mass-production carbon-fibre bows are going to have the last laugh, by repeated fine-tuning until you really won't be able to tell the difference.

Andy, as far as I've heard, Stradivarius *did* turn out some right dogs. But he was an experimental instrument maker, working with what was cutting-edge technology at the time, so it's only to be expected - experiments usually do fail. I'd bet that if he were alive today, he'd be mad as hell with all those people who are still just blindly copying a centuries-old design with centuries-old tools.

Graham.

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Desert Dancer
Date: 09 Jun 11 - 02:39 PM

Bow Makers Unite Behind a Precious Tree
By Leslie Kaufman
The New York Times

As the earth's forests and other natural resources face growing peril, humans are affected in many unexpected ways. In recent years, musicians have found themselves organizing to save the pernambuco, a medium-size tropical tree native to Brazil and known for its unique red wood. Discovered by French bow makers 250 years ago, it provides the primary — indeed only — wood for making high-end bows for professional musicians. (The tree is also known as the pau-brasil.)

"No comparable substitute is known to bow makers or musicians," the International Pernambuco Conservation Initiative, a charity created by bow makers around the world to finance replanting initiatives in Brazil, says at its Web site. "The rigidity, flexibility, density, and beauty of this wood, combined with its ability to hold a fixed curve, makes pernambuco a unique material that is essential to the craft of bow making and to the musicians who use these bows."

But the tree, which grows primarily in Brazil's Atlantic forest, has been so depleted by logging and agricultural and urban development that it is listed there as endangered. So to aid the institute's replanting efforts, bow and violin makers have crossed a once-inviolate line and are giving up some closely held secrets of their specialized artisanry.

Tom Wilder, a violin maker, restorer and historian of stringed instruments from Montreal, has put together a three-volume, 1,600-page set of books called The Conservation, Restoration, and Repair of Stringed Instruments and Their Bows, that reveals the best techniques.

Profits from the book, available at a list price of $1,395, will go to the I.P.C.I.
---
Presmably, if you don't need the books, you can donate to the International Pernambuco Conservation Initiative directly in any amount you choose. ;-) (See their links page for other regions.)

~ Becky in Tucson

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: GUEST,FloraG
Date: 10 Jun 11 - 05:26 AM

I use a plastic bow with my plastic fiddle - the harder strings lend themselves to the bow. It also matches the colour.
I use a more flexible wooden bow with the wooden fiddles - I want a softer sound.
FloraG

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Tootler
Date: 10 Jun 11 - 06:39 PM

If he did sell his bow for $200 by mass-producing, you can guarantee no "serious" player would buy it - it's obviously too cheap to be good quality, right...?

To true, Grab. You got just that with plastic recorders although it is true that the early ones were not all that good. However the plastic recorders from the reputable makers these days are, in fact, excellent instruments having both good intonation across the range and good tone. You can get a good plastic descant for less than £10 (GB) and a plastic alto for around £20 GB and the attitude of some is "They can't be a proper instrument, they're too cheap". That said, that attitude is changing and I have seen plastic Yamaha altos used on stage by professional musicians.

Another interesting story. I was in a flute/whistle workshop and the tutor was talking about the problems of intonation in the second octave, especially above top g. She got each of us to play a top b and to try and bring it into tune. I was playing recorder at the time and my recorder played top b clean and true, no problem. The instrument - a bright blue transparent plastic Yamaha descant cost at the time about 6 pounds.

The point of this digression: I am sure in time, mass produced fiddle bows of synthetic materials will become increasingly accepted and the stick in the mud snobbery will be overcome. Often what it takes is a prominent musician to use one and extol its virtues.

As to the discussion between Bert and J-i-K it seems to me that the adverse comments made by some along the lines of "I just know" are because they do not understand what is being discussed so they try to dismiss it as not relevant. However if a good quality bow is to be made from synthetic materials and be mass produced, the kind of analysis they are discussing is necessary. Plastic recorders are injection moulded and to make the instruments reliably, in large quantities and with good intonation; the shape of the bore, the location and dimensions of the holes have to be calculated very precisely and the moulds have to be accurate to a few hundredths of a millimeter.

Subject: RE: Difference in fiddle bows?
From: Bert
Date: 10 Jun 11 - 06:48 PM

As I said in '06

...just for fun, post the details of your best & worst bow here and say which is which of course and we'll see what we can do...