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Playing Since: 1973
Experience Level: Purty Good
fiddlepogo has made 5192 additions to Fiddle Hangout 
Gender: Male
Age: 57
My Instruments:
Two Knilling 4KF models:
One, labeled "Bucharest" dated 2006 and bought new. It's sounding sweet.
Another, bought on eBay is possibly from about 2000, does not say "Bucharest"
and smells funny when the weather gets warm-
could it be of Chinese origin?
I go back and forth which I like better- right now the smelly one is my cross-tuned fiddle...
which is what I bought it for actually! The Romanian one is strung with Thomastik Precision Lights (steel), the other with Prims, and I use Kaplan Premium rosin.
I recently bought an Eastman VL100 still strung with D'Addario Pro Artes.
It's mellower than the other two, and is especially well suited for waltzes, Irish tunes, Bluegrass, and probably Swedish tunes too.
Favorite Bands/Musicians:
Formative influences: William Stepp, Luther Strong, Tommy Jarrell, Bunt Stephens, Franklin George, Earl Collins, Tom Sauber,
John W. Summers, Jean Carignan,
Hubbard & Molk. Many of the key ones were downbow fiddlers.
Recently I like Erynn Marshall, Matt Brown, Chirps Smith, and Michael Garvin...
I like the Bruces- Greene and Molsky too, also Jehile Kirkhuff's Pennsylvania Old Time fiddling.
Bluegrass: I heard the Monroe & the Bluegrass Boys and the Bluegrass Cardinals, also Byron Berline with somebody or other at McCabe's Guitar shop in the early '70s. I also had an LP of the Stanley Brothers, and found a cassette version of the same album a couple of years back. So I'm really mostly into the older Bluegrass styles. I can sing the bass part (barely) in the quartet singing since I'm a low baritone.
Even more recently (YouTube is expanding my fiddling mind!)
I like the Quebe Sisters Band (yeah I know their not Bluegrass!), Craig Duncan, Graham Townshend, Gilles Apap, and the Voetberg Family Band.
Profile Info:
Visible to: Public
Created 6/27/2007
Last Visit 3/11/2010
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Saturday, February 27, 2010 @7:14:21 PM
Today was the 4th Saturday of the month, and there is almost always a Bluegrass Jam at the same cafe venue that I use for my Old Time jam on the 3rd Saturday.
I hadn't gone in a long time, but I felt like going today, and I decided to take Booker Knilling (the fiddle I use for Old Time) as well as Odie Eastman (since the new fiddle smells funny too, and the name Stinky is already taken, Odie will work!!!) I figured it would be a good test of the new fiddle's capabilities. I thought I'd use Odie for background work and fills on songs, and Booker for the fiddle tunes.
Odie did even better than I expected on songs... and on two fiddle tunes I did on Booker, I wasn't helped as much as I thought by Booker's extra volume or treble. So the third fiddle tune, I used Odie, and she did fine!
Odie's mellower sound really allows me more confidence in improv, since I know if I make a mistake, it'll be a MELLOW sounding mistake. Even with the synthetic strings, Odie is just WAY closer to copping the bluegrass fiddle sound than Booker. I checked it out with the jam leader, and she said you could hear Odie just fine during breaks, so she's loud enough. And I asked the other fiddler to play it, and he says it sounds good for Bluegrass and is loud enough, and will probably get even better as it gets played in.
When I play Bluegrass, I'm actually NOT getting that far from my Old Time roots. I often do simple melody breaks with double stops and drones. I also do simple fills and runs, and sometimes use a shuffle for a backup lick. Sawshuffle has an especially nice chugga-chugga feel that is great on train songs!!! And of course, on fiddle tunes, I just play the fiddle tunes!!! In addition to all that, Odie blends nicely, and gives me the option of doing harmony lines. I also noticed that as mellow as Odie sounds, I'm more confident about improvising on the E string. I also found that Odie sounds good in odd keys- several songs were in B, and one in F, and it was just easier to play in those keys than on Booker.
So all in all, it was a very encouraging test for my new fiddle, especially since I think it helped me play with more confidence overall in one of the more challenging jams I go to.
You may have noticed I've taken "Old Time" off of my avatar. I still play Old Time, but I've finally realized that while Old Time is the heart of my fiddling, my "core competency", it by no means defines or limits what I do on fiddle. And different fiddles with different sounds will allow me to stretch in different stylistic directions, just like different sounding guitars do.
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