Surely someone somewhere has built a round fiddle. I’ve been playing around with some ideas over a few years & I’ve built two fiddles one with a banjo head and one with a drum head. The first one sounded terrible as you’d expect. I put No2 together last week and it is showing some potential. This time I added a tone ring and sound post.
Today I’m starting a new batch of nine banjos and I’m going to include two fiddles. They will have 10” rims for the sides and a tensioned plywood top & back. One will be a regular sized violin (treble violin is what I like to call it), & the other will be a Tenor violin (or tenor viola). So they will be voiced an octave apart.
Well, there's a family of instruments referred to as "spike fiddles" and some of them are round. There are several webpages about them - here's just one devoted to contemporary makers: spikefiddle.com/
The problem with a round violin is that you need clearance for the bow. The C bouts on a violin provide room for the bow to avoid the top edges. Even so, players who aren’t careful enough will wear away the edges or corners. To make the round shape work, the bridge has to be tall or wide enough to provide clearance or the body of the instrument has to be small enough to accommodate the bridge.
There are of course many bowed folk instruments that have different body shapes, but they don’t function or sound very much like violins. To get the “violin” sound you need a hollow body with a certain internal air volume and a shape that allows for playability and tone production using a bow.
quote:
Originally posted by The Violin BeautifulThe problem with a round violin is that you need clearance for the bow. The C bouts on a violin provide room for the bow to avoid the top edges. Even so, players who aren’t careful enough will wear away the edges or corners. To make the round shape work, the bridge has to be tall or wide enough to provide clearance or the body of the instrument has to be small enough to accommodate the bridge.
There are of course many bowed folk instruments that have different body shapes, but they don’t function or sound very much like violins. To get the “violin” sound you need a hollow body with a certain internal air volume and a shape that allows for playability and tone production using a bow.
Yes it took a bit of juggling about to get the bowing space sorted. It worked out well in the end. It's a combination of getting the right arch in the top height and bridge placement. Then finding a way to secure the sound post. This one is a tenor fiddle GDAE and the great thing about it is that the stretch of the arm is much less even though the bridge looks further away it is actually a lot closer than my conventional tenor. This is going to make them playable for people of average size. I'm 6' and my 18" tenor was a real challenge at the start but this is a breeze to play
I wonder what difference in tone if you didn't remove so much wood out of the scroll? I was always told the mass of the scroll was important.
quote:
Originally posted by farmerjonesI wonder what difference in tone if you didn't remove so much wood out of the scroll? I was always told the mass of the scroll was important.
I'm wondering what difference in tone with a banjo head instead of carved top. Does it sound like a bowed banjo?
Yeah, what does it sound like - and how do you hold it?
quote:
Originally posted by farmerjonesI wonder what difference in tone if you didn't remove so much wood out of the scroll? I was always told the mass of the scroll was important.
Yes the scroll IS important. If you see in the photo there is a carrythrough of the neck into the body. This acts as a counterweight to give more balance to the neck. So basically it adds more resonance than it loses. I use the same technique with my banjos but delete the headstock altogether. I know that it's hard to see in the photo because of the reflection, there is a hole drilled through the counterweight directly under the bridge to keep the sound post from shifting. The sound post is THE most important thing to making it a viable instrument.
quote:
Originally posted by martyjoequote:
Originally posted by farmerjonesI wonder what difference in tone if you didn't remove so much wood out of the scroll? I was always told the mass of the scroll was important.
Yes the scroll IS important. If you see in the photo there is a carrythrough of the neck into the body. This acts as a counterweight to give more balance to the neck. So basically it adds more resonance than it loses. I use the same technique with my banjos but delete the headstock altogether. I know that it's hard to see in the photo because of the reflection, there is a hole drilled through the counterweight directly under the bridge to keep the sound post from shifting. The sound post is THE most important thing to making it a viable instrument.
I'm trying to imagine how a sound post works when the top is Mylar instead of carved wood. On a wood top both the sound post and bass bar work to distribute vibrations. The sound post divides the treble side top and acts as a fulcrum dividing the waves. I'm thinking different things are happening across a stretched Mylar top, and wonder what a sound post even does in that situation.
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