fiddler135 - Posted - 09/09/2022:  06:59:56

What are your preferred methods of plate tuning? I am considering building a device for determining the free plate’s natural frequency electronically, and I wondered what your experiences are. Do you use your ear only? Or do you use an electronic means, and if so, what method?

fiddler135 - Posted - 09/09/2022:  13:23:09

Edited by - fiddler135 on 09/09/2022 13:27:50

fiddler135 - Posted - 09/09/2022:  13:24:19

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Originally posted by fiddler135

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Originally posted by fiddler135

What are your preferred methods of plate tuning? I am considering building a device for determining the free plate’s natural frequency electronically, and I wondered what your experiences are. Do you use your ear only? Or do you use an electronic means, and if so, what method?

 I am trying to decide between using the plate as a speaker and measuring the frequency with an oscilloscope, and exciting the plate with a speaker and iron filings on the plate. 

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fiddler135 - Posted - 09/10/2022:  03:19:29

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Originally posted by fiddler135

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Originally posted by fiddler135

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Originally posted by fiddler135

What are your preferred methods of plate tuning? I am considering building a device for determining the free plate’s natural frequency electronically, and I wondered what your experiences are. Do you use your ear only? Or do you use an electronic means, and if so, what method?

 I am trying to decide between using the plate as a speaker and measuring the frequency with an oscilloscope, and exciting the plate with a speaker and iron filings on the plate. 

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A better question is; Do any of you makers out there measure tap tones, to either determine optimal plate thickness, or to help in doing so? And if so, what methods do you use? (Generally, I don't expect trade secrets)

kjb - Posted - 09/10/2022:  04:26:56

from what I hear not a lot of interest in plate tuning , I took a course with bob in ny , it was interesting , but not life changing , your best bet is to concentrate on the arching.

The Violin Beautiful - Posted - 09/10/2022:  09:42:56

When I started out I was very interested in plate tuning and would carefully measure tap tones. I did that while making my first instruments and had good results. However, in the years since, I’ve regraduated thousands of violins and come to rely on other things instead. I wonder now if it was really the plate tuning that made the difference or if it was the model and arching.

What I’ve found over time is that plate tuning is much more of a speculative subject than it might seem at face value. I’ve learned that many of the makers I respect think of it as a complete waste of time. There are makers who still believe strongly in the idea, and I’m not sure I’m willing to write it off entirely, but I’m no longer convinced that it’s the way to get a good instrument.

Here’s something I find interesting: at one time it was popular to go thinner on plates to try to overcome the “new instrument” sound and quickly get a better response out of the instrument. In recent years, makers have been going more in the opposite direction. A lot of this comes from studies of Guarneri violins. The argument is that they were originally quite thick, and some of the best examples of his violins are those that are the least altered.

We don’t know exactly how thick many of the great violins were originally, so when the plates are measured and it’s determined that they were tuned, it’s based on a reading of the plates after extensive work has been done, including regraduation and new bass bars, both of which can alter the tap tones. There’s no direct evidence of plate tuning at the time of the great makers, and modern instruments made by tap tuning have not proven to be superior to those made without it.

The bottom line for me is to learn to read the wood by feel and to find a way to produce the most consistent results you can. If tap tuning helps you do that, there’s nothing wrong with doing it, but just don’t get too heavily invested in the idea, especially if you’re not getting good results.

Brian Wood - Posted - 09/10/2022:  14:58:02

I agree with Rich. I have made a few instruments and when I started out I was interested in tap tones. I've come to believe there are too many variables in the relationships of the parts in the whole instrument for that approach to be very useful. Not that there's probably any harm in it, and there are things about it I don't know because my attempts were rudimentary. Now I'll carve a plate using my previous tops as guides. It's probably important to have an idea of a woods stiffness and specific gravity. All 13 of my violins have been carved from the same tree so there's some advantage (and some disadvantage) in that.



A good friend and luthier who makes fretted instruments uses sound frequencies to vibrate a top he's making, then sprinkles glitter in it to try to replicate patterns from other successful tops. Interesting, but I just don't have a sense that it's worth my trouble.

KCFiddles - Posted - 09/10/2022:  21:39:08

I worked with a world class maker for years, and when I asked him what the most important factors were in making a good violin, his unequivocal answer was "arching and wood choice", followed by graduation. I watched his experiments with ground for six years, and became convinced that his ground was a major factor in giving his professional instruments an edge in getting the sound that he is after. He tried all that plate tuning and Chladny stuff when Hutchins and all were writing about it, and all the really good makers I know are aware of it, but none of them rate it as a major factor in making good violins.

You can do a search on Maestronet and find 15 or 20 years of discussions about plate tuning, and get ALL your questions answered. Even Davide Sora, a first-rate maker from Italy has had some contributions lately. There is a free program called Audacity that can be useful, along with a good mic, in getting FFT analyses of tap tones and bowed notes. Not completely a waste of time; educational, but not the key to making good violins.

My project right now is using photogrammetry and CAM to precisely duplicate the arching of fiddles that have the sound profiles that I like. Could be interesting; could be a bust. I'll know in a few months. I've got some good wood, and a colleague with an industrial CNC router and lots of experience who is interested in related applications.

The Violin Beautiful - Posted - 09/11/2022:  01:13:25

I would not recommend following Hutchens in doing the plate vibrations with glitter. Her experiments were interesting in theory, but many haven’t lasted the test of time and the instruments she produced are notorious for their tonal issues, sometimes described as being almost unrecognizable as members of the violin family. The problem with working wood to make an attractive shape in the glitter or iron filings is that it sacrifices the wood’s properties; you end up with graduations that aren’t any good for the plate structurally or tonally.

It’s an exciting idea to look for scientific process that can be used to produce consistent results. However, the processes explored thus far have all suffered from one fatal flaw: they simply can’t take into account all the variables from one piece of wood to another.

In the end, it may be a fool’s errand to seek a solution to the age-old mystery. Even great makers are unable to produce identical results.

A little while ago a customer told me a fascinating story about one of his violins. He’d spent a long time with the maker planning out what he wanted and the maker made the violin on commission and was pleased with the result. After the player got it he was initially happy with it. He played it for a few years but never found that it ultimately worked the way he’d wanted, so he brought it back to the maker to see if anything could be done to change it. Upon hearing it the maker said “Give the violin back to me. My God, that’s the worst sounding violin I’ve ever made and it’s completely wrong for you. Let me take it back and make you what you need.” True to his word, the maker made him a new instrument and took back the old one. The new one did not open up quickly, but he told me that after a number of years it suddenly came alive and began to sound glorious. Although he’s bought and sold many other violins throughout his career, he’s kept this one.

fiddler135 - Posted - 09/11/2022:  02:28:24

The best argument I have heard for (and against) our chosen methods; “When you can’t measure what is important, what you can measure becomes important.”

fiddler135 - Posted - 09/11/2022:  06:09:33

Thank you all for your feedback. It doesn’t sound like it is worth the trouble to precisely measure tap tones, at least not as the exclusive way to make  a great sounding violin. However, I do see that tap tones could be a measurement worth noting when building an instrument, like the weights. It is just a matter of how precisely I want to measure them.  

KCFiddles - Posted - 09/11/2022:  07:02:26

The one thing that discredits plate tuning in my book is the idea that violins have to sound good at ALL frequencies, and a relatively even response across the spectrum is viewed as desirable, with broad, generalized peaks being largely manipulable by setup parameters. Any sharp response peaks are generally regarded as a problem. Anton Krutz is the best maker I know well, and once he has his arching right, he adjusts thickness according to the stiffness and density of the wood, primarily by just flexing he wood in his hands. Works pretty well for him......

fiddler135 - Posted - 09/11/2022:  08:37:15

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Originally posted by KCFiddles

The one thing that discredits plate tuning in my book is the idea that violins have to sound good at ALL frequencies, and a relatively even response across the spectrum is viewed as desirable, with broad, generalized peaks being largely manipulable by setup parameters. Any sharp response peaks are generally regarded as a problem. Anton Krutz is the best maker I know well, and once he has his arching right, he adjusts thickness according to the stiffness and density of the wood, primarily by just flexing he wood in his hands. Works pretty well for him......

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Concerning your last point, I am "tuning" a plate now that has an obvious difference in hardness within the plate. It is still rather thick, being 5mm in the center tapering to 3 mm at the outside, with a weight of 148 grams. I assume it is best to make the harder (less flexible) parts of the plate thinner, with the goal  of obtaining a uniform flexibility throughout the plate. Is this the way krutz approaches the problem?

KCFiddles - Posted - 09/11/2022:  10:03:01

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Originally posted by fiddler135

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Originally posted by KCFiddles

The one thing that discredits plate tuning in my book is the idea that violins have to sound good at ALL frequencies, and a relatively even response across the spectrum is viewed as desirable, with broad, generalized peaks being largely manipulable by setup parameters. Any sharp response peaks are generally regarded as a problem. Anton Krutz is the best maker I know well, and once he has his arching right, he adjusts thickness according to the stiffness and density of the wood, primarily by just flexing he wood in his hands. Works pretty well for him......

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Concerning your last point, I am "tuning" a plate now that has an obvious difference in hardness within the plate. It is still rather thick, being 5mm in the center tapering to 3 mm at the outside, with a weight of 148 grams. I assume it is best to make the harder (less flexible) parts of the plate thinner, with the goal  of obtaining a uniform flexibility throughout the plate. Is this the way krutz approaches the problem?

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First off, Anton's violins sell for $15,000, and are way underpriced, IMHO, primarily because he doesn't make his primary living from making. Remember the first factor in making a good violin is wood selection, in the opinion of most of the proven makers I know, so he's not going to waste his time with wood that doesn't have uniform characteristics.  Second, he's got years' worth of good wood in his warehouse the last time I looked, so I really doubt he's even run into that problem.

I know some of the old Cremonese violins I've seen look like they were made out of old fence posts, but with politics and wars and sumptuary laws in Venice and other Italian kingdoms being what they were in the 1600s and 1700s, good wood was pretty hard to get sometimes, but there's no mention of plate tuning in Cremona, so that question is sort of moot. 

Most makers pay attention to plate weight, and at least listen to their plates to gauge response, but I don't know of many who pay a lot of attention to specific frequencies. (David Burgess just wrote that he finds a notched stick (rather than steel rules) sufficient for recording measurements in many instances, and indeed it was common practice up until a couple hundred years ago. I agree with him.)

fiddler135 - Posted - 09/11/2022:  10:53:49

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Originally posted by KCFiddles

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Originally posted by fiddler135

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Originally posted by KCFiddles

The one thing that discredits plate tuning in my book is the idea that violins have to sound good at ALL frequencies, and a relatively even response across the spectrum is viewed as desirable, with broad, generalized peaks being largely manipulable by setup parameters. Any sharp response peaks are generally regarded as a problem. Anton Krutz is the best maker I know well, and once he has his arching right, he adjusts thickness according to the stiffness and density of the wood, primarily by just flexing he wood in his hands. Works pretty well for him......

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Concerning your last point, I am "tuning" a plate now that has an obvious difference in hardness within the plate. It is still rather thick, being 5mm in the center tapering to 3 mm at the outside, with a weight of 148 grams. I assume it is best to make the harder (less flexible) parts of the plate thinner, with the goal  of obtaining a uniform flexibility throughout the plate. Is this the way krutz approaches the problem?

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First off, Anton's violins sell for $15,000, and are way underpriced, IMHO, primarily because he doesn't make his primary living from making. Remember the first factor in making a good violin is wood selection, in the opinion of most of the proven makers I know, so he's not going to waste his time with wood that doesn't have uniform characteristics.  Second, he's got years' worth of good wood in his warehouse the last time I looked, so I really doubt he's even run into that problem.

I know some of the old Cremonese violins I've seen look like they were made out of old fence posts, but with politics and wars and sumptuary laws in Venice and other Italian kingdoms being what they were in the 1600s and 1700s, good wood was pretty hard to get sometimes, but there's no mention of plate tuning in Cremona, so that question is sort of moot. 

Most makers pay attention to plate weight, and at least listen to their plates to gauge response, but I don't know of many who pay a lot of attention to specific frequencies. (David Burgess just wrote that he finds a notched stick (rather than steel rules) sufficient for recording measurements in many instances, and indeed it was common practice up until a couple hundred years ago. I agree with him.)

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What I meant by "tuning" was graduating, combined with flexing, tapping, etc. I did not mean "tuning" literally; that is trying to make the plate vibrate at a specific frequency. 

Also, with regards to whether the old masters tuned plates or not, there is no evidence that they did, but there's no evidence that they didn't, either. 

 

Edited by - fiddler135 on 09/11/2022 11:01:36