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🦋 Lutherie
(in which I take a carving chisel to my fiddle and fail to destroy it)
Ever since I got my Stroh fiddle last May, I have felt like the bridge was not quite accurately fitted to the violin, in in two regards. The way it transmits sound to the resonator is via a brass extension -- the bridge rests on the metal, so vibrations from the strings pass into the brass and move the resonator cap. But the brass ledge is not quite as wide as the feet of the bridge; they extend into the air a few millimeters on either side, so some fraction of the sound is being lost. Not a whole lot I can do about that; but furthermore, the bridge was slightly too tall -- when the strings were at full tension it buckled slightly. This meant the feet were not fully in contact with the brass, and sound was being lost that way as well.So all this year and a half I have been meaning to whittle a little bit of height off the top of the bridge. It seemed like it would be a really easy repair to make; the odds of screwing up were low and in a worst case scenario, I would only need to replace the bridge. Still I felt squeamish about taking a knife to the fiddle... Tonight after a year and a half of procrastinating, I finally did it -- it was quick and easy and the sound post-repair is noticeably cleaner and brighter than before. Nice! As far as the width of the brass, I think to fix that would involve finding a new brass extension of the correct size -- a narrower bridge would be a poor solution. But for now I am quite content with the fix; doing this kind of work on the instrument brings me into closer contact with it and makes it more fully my fiddle.
 Update: This did not really work very well. See this post for an analysis of why not, and what I ended up doing.
posted evening of Saturday, September third, 2011
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