Official Luthiers Forum!

I just saw this come across the wire and thought people might like to see it -

the original paper - http://www.plosone.org/doi/pone.0002554
john

Wood density holds key to Stradivarius sweet sound

By Ben Hirschler
Tue Jul 1, 9:02 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Researchers using a medical scanner have worked out why a Stradivarius violin sounds
so good -- it is because of the remarkably even density of the wood.

For the past 300 years, musicians and scientists have puzzled over the unparalleled quality of classical Cremonese violins made by Italian masters like Antonio Stradivari and Giuseppe Guarneri del Gesu.
Now a Dutch doctor and a violin maker from Arkansas think they have cracked the mystery after comparing five classical and eight modern violins in a computed tomography (CT) scanner normally used to examine patients.

Using an adaptation of a computer program developed to calculate lung densities in people with emphysema, they were able to analyze the physical properties of violins without risking damage to instruments worth millions of dollars. They found no significant differences between the median densities of the modern and the antique violins but did discover far less variation between wood grains of early and late growth in the old ones.
Since differentials in wood density affect vibration and therefore sound quality, the discovery may well explain the superiority of the Cremonese violins, they reported in the online journal PLoS ONE on Wednesday.
So why is the maple and spruce wood in a Stradivarius so different?

Part of the reason may be that trees grow slightly differently today than in the past.
"Climate difference could explain part of it but treatment of the wood could be another explanation.
A third answer could simply be the ageing of the wood over the past 300 years," Dr Berend Stoel of the Leiden University Medical Center told Reuters. "There is no way of knowing from this data; we've just shown there are density differences."

Still, Stoel and U.S. violin maker Terry Borman think the research may help modern instrument makers
seeking to replicate the work of the Italian masters.

John buddy this is interesting and I am wondering when Stew-Mac will start selling CT machines.....

This topic has come up before and the OLF skeptics tend to come out in droves. Don't be surprised if this happens again. The reference to differences in climate also has some risk of getting political.

Thanks for posting this and know in advance that you are not responsible for what happens next......

Thats great, so all the OTHER old violins by other makers had this great wood density and are worth just as much? Doink


Yea, PRE INDUSTRIAL is the one key here, wood cell structure seems to be the big one though.


great can of worms though...

_________________
Here is what a Parlor Guitar is for!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oEa8PkjO6_I

The only problem is that there's about a 99% chance that the *5* Stradivari instruments the examined didn't even have the original tops, so the study is moot. As I understand it, only one Strad in existance is believed to have the original top still in place.

Perhaps Colin or some other violin person can comment more intelligently than I.
Strike that...I know a lot of folks can comment more intelligently than I, but I was refering to this particular subject.
Oh! You know what I mean.




Ok folks, Hesh says it's a go...we can all pile on this one now....let the chaos begin!

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

wow.

someone discovered the key to Stradivari's tone. again.

good press release - er, no, I mean definitive research study.

Actually the key is in the varnish. Or was it the recurve? No, it was most certainly an effect of the scrapers and planing technique. Unless maybe, no, it had to be that the logs were floated downstream to mills and spent weeks to months to years submerged in water. But then of course, there was that mini ice age in Europe the trees grew in. Yes, that's a good one. But wait, I take that back. It was the chemicals used to treat wood to keep the bugs out. Or maybe the mineral fillers or volcanic ash that made it in to the finish. Yup. The pumice and minerals in the finish. That's my final answer.

I'm sure Nagyvary could answer this quite definitively for us. He's discovered the secret more times than anyone else I can think of. It's great, because he always releases a product based on that research around the same time, so you're all set.

The tone of Stradivarius violins is incredible, but the persistent myth seems to be that his benchmark quality has been unachievable since his death. That level of tone has certainly been matched and arguably surpassed many times by makers since his time and up through today. Somehow, regardless of what different magic they do or don't use, they just always seem to come from really, really good makers. Try to quantify and look under as many electron microscopes as you like, but the common link sure seems to be skill and experience to me.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Where did you get that idea? It's the necks that have been replaced in almost all Cremonese violins, not the tops.

It has been a few years since someone solved the mystery of the Strads (last time it was the climate guy with the Little Ice Age/ Maunder minimum). That was a great and original solution, with only the problem that the Maunder minimum occurred about the time the fiddles were being built, while the wood grew over the previous few hundred years. But who wants to be a killjoy, the more solutions, the better! So we are due for it to be solved again; this time the docs should have a turn. Now if someone could just solve the mystery of why solving the mystery of the Strads can always sell so much wood pulp.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

The "secret" of the old cremonese violins is always interesting reading but it is funny that no one really ever mentions bows in these articles. I'm sure that all violinists would love a Strad but most of the decent players I have spoken with are more concerned with finding the right bow for "their sound". Anybody know any violinists they can ask about this?

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John Lewis
Wannabe builder owned by 2 crazy dachshunds

I'll add to the pile..... Remember the solution that explained the tone as a result of the wood being soaked in borax? I just don't know but if this were true then we also can assume that Antonio had the whitest golf socks on the course......

Bows certainly are valued and discussed as an equal counterpart to the violin within violin circles, but "Tourte" just doesn't draw as much attention in a press release as "Stradivari".

In Stradivari's time, bows did not have the recognition as the separate trade they have today, and were often made in the same shops as the violins were. It wasn't until later in the 18th century that they began the journey to gain acknowledgment as a separate and equally important craft. The bows of Stradivari's time were very different anyway. They were considered transitional, somwhere between baroque and the Tourte style, pernambuco had not yet become standard and woods such as snakewood were still more common. The Strad's in their time were a very, very different instrument than what have been modified to today, and used a very different bow as well.

Really though, it comes down to that a Tourte article doesn't sell issues of the New York Times quite like a Stradivarius one does.

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Yes, but watch for more articles about the magic of pernambuco, and the near-impossibility of getting the old primo wood. Tourte is a sleeper.

_________________
Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Thank goodness this has been resolved. Now I can sleep at night.

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Jimmy Caldwell
http://www.caldwellguitars.com

You know, I hadn't thought of it that way Howard, but something tells me your right....

I consider myself quite lucky to have a true master bowmaker and well respected restoration artist David Orlin, in a studio right upstairs from my shop. I've learned more about bows (mainly how much I don't know) in the last few years than I ever imagined I would. With people like David Orlin, Gregg Alf (and his former apprentice Feng Jiang), Joseph Curtin, Jeffrey Holmes, David Burgess, and restoration artists like Mark Norfleet and Anton Smith, Ann Arbor seems to hold a strange little grouping of fine violin artisans. It's kind of nice.

I'm sure they get more of a kick out of these discoveries than I do....

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

Well Howard, you missed the next line that I wrote:



I thought that I had read that little factoid somewhere, or that I had heard it on a television documentary or something. I thought it was a commonly held belief...but as I said, I'm no expert on this stuff. Never claimed to be, never will claim to be. What I heard was that many of the violins et al from Strad had had necks and tops and backs and sides all replaced for the most part down through the years, to the point that little of the original materials were left on a great many of the examples. Perhaps it was a dream....

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I've read a couple of books on the subject of Strads and the top and the scroll seem to be the defining characteristic of a Strad. When a dealer in Strads gets an instrument that might be a Strad, the fact that it has been re-topped reduces the value down a great deal and the instrument becomes more of a curiosity than an investment. Almost anything else on the instrument can be changed, however, and it will still be called a Strad.

A lot of Strads have been poorly repaired over the years, however, and tops with large patches in them exist. This also affects the value of the instrument.

I haven't read the article but their observations that the top density is very even is interesting. Is it THE secret to the great sound? I doubt it. But it is another data point. One of the researches said that the didn't know why the wood was so even. They only said that the instruments they tested have even density.

Sometimes the extravagant claims in articles are put in by the author of the article and that the original paper doesn't make any such claims. I think it would be unfair to assume that the researchers are frauds or simpletons because their work was written up in the popular press.

Jeeze, now I'm totally deflated! All along I thought that the secret to a Strad was the poly varnish applied with an old sock. Well, you know... a really old sock!

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Jim Howell
Charlotte, NC

So what they are saying is that Stradivarius used good quality wood and that the wood aging for 300 years old is also a factor. Well glory be, solved at last!

When will they just accept that Stradivarius (and a lot of other builders in the area) were just very good at making violins. And of course over the years, the sound of a Stradivarius has become accepted as the best sound for a violin, so that anything that doesn't sound like a Strad is inferior, when it may be just as good, but different.

I guess in 300 years or so they'll be trying to work out the secret of a Klepper guitar ( I think it's because Howard only voices his tops under a full moon). After all, it couldn't just be that Howard is a great guitar builder could it?

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Yes!!! It's all in the horse hair! You just can't get horses today that match those old Italian steeds!

Actually, I think that Colin is right. In fact I bet that there is probably a modern maker(s) building something just as good, if not better than those old giants did, but it just sounds different (which may even be superior, if you listen). After all, how many times have you heard about the unmatched magic of those old Les Pauls, when you could probably plug in a new PRS that plays and sounds better?

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Carlton Macksam
Muskegon, Michigan

I reckon it was the way Antonio held his mouth. Unpublished research (gossip) indicates that he spoke with a slight speech impediment. This caused a change in the way his jaw pressed on his brain and the neuron affected led to an uncommon talent to talk to timber. Hence the luthier of renown.

Naw whare dad I pat that horse hair glue?......

At what point did Strads gain the mystique that they enjoy today?

Antonio must have had one heck of a marketing department...!

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http://www.PeakeGuitars.com

This is interesting. Can you give a reference for the speech impediment part?

I have a relevant conjecture that I've mentioned before about voicing instruments, which is that builders unconsciously push them toward the tone and timbre of their own voices.

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Howard Klepper
http://www.klepperguitars.com

When all else fails, clean the shop.

Finally, I have an explanation as to why all the obnoxious loudmouths seem to gravitate toward dreadnoughts.

Ba dum pum....

_________________
Eschew obfuscation, espouse elucidation.

I don't know but I think it was the staining factor from wiping his, well you know. Unfortunately we don't know what his diet was so, even that is a mystery!!!

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I'm outside looking in, just farther from the window than most.

Good point. I think the entire existence of this forum is founded upon that-- there are masters here who consistently turn out what, in my biased opinion, are instruments that look, feel, and sound better than the Stradivari (i.e., Martin, Gibson, Fender, etc.) of the guitar world.

My opinion-- Heifetz would have sounded like Heifetz on Stradivarius or a pawn shop rag of a violin. I think 99% of the Stradivarius fascination is the, for lack of a better expression, "romance" associated with the violins and the legends attached to them. I remember reading a book when I was in middle school (of which I cannot remember the title nor author) that had an epilogue by a supposed direct descendent of Stradivarius. He claimed to have found the varnish formula in the old family Bible-- and I'll never forget this line-- "but it was a large, unweidly book, so I destroyed it." Of course, he claimed to have kept a copy of the varnish formula, which absolutely makes his claims true. (*SARCASM ALERT*) I wish I could remember the title or the author... all I remember is that it was rebound in that disgusting paisely orange binding that middle school library books tend to have.

I posted this after seeing it early this morning and got back home a after a long day to see that, as Hesh predicted, this set off a storm of comments. I, like many here, have read of people claiming to have discovered Stradivari's 'secret'. Over time, invariably the discoveries fade away only to be replaced by new one's that fade away as well. But through it all, I still find myself intrigued.

Out of curiosity I carefully read the original study. I read a fair number of scientific studies in the course of my agriculture work and after many moons of doing so, I've become at least to some degree tuned in to seeing clues as to the general objectivity, the tools and methods and the parameters of the conclusions of studies. I don't know much about the science of this particular one but in general terms it looks to me to be well conducted, conservative in scope and conclusions that have a ring of truth.

When this report hit the wires - headline editors rightly figured that the word "Stradivarius" would would catch peoples attention and by implying that 'the' secret has been revealed they undoubted thought it would stir even more interest - after all it's what caught my eye. And along with most of you - my skepticism as well. Even though I've never been within a 1000 miles of a Strad as far as I know, I still like to pretend I know a little about 'em.

The study was not funded or sponsored, which undoubtedly had something to do with the small number of instruments measured - of the five Cremonese violins three were Gesù' violins (I don't imagine there would have been very many hits if the headlines had read 'Gesù's secrets revealed') and there were 8 contemporary
violins. The objective of the study could be roughly boiled down to this - to utilize high tech measuring tools in new ways to better understand the sound value of the older instruments and to see if the information might be of value to contemporary makers.

In fairness, the study itself is very interesting and worth taking a look at. While reading it I thought that it would be interesting to see Alan Carruth's comments. Rather than reporting that they had discovered 'the' secret, to the contrary, the authors are very up front about acknowledging that they were measuring a limited set of proportions- namely what they call the differential density (which is roughly the variation in density within each growth ring attributed to season growth) and the median density.

When these measurements were plotted out, what they found was that, although all instruments measured, old and new, had similar median densities but the older instruments tended to have more consistent and uniform differential densities. They clearly state that this is nothing more than a characteristic clustering and that there are many other factors that could lend themselves to the tone of the classic violins.

I think they would completely agree with what Colin has posted above that the old makers were extraordinarily
talented makers who above all were masters of their art.

I was a little curious about who's violins those contemporary ones might have been, so I googled the first maker's name -Terry M. Borman, from Arkansas. Well, that opened up a whole new can of worms. I was hoping that they hadn't compared a Cremonese violins with some Ozark Fiddles whittled out of a tree stumps. They didn't. Terry M. Borman also one of the researchers, is a builder of exquisite artistry and craftsmanship
and deserves a look. http://www.bormanviolins.com

Also look at his article from the magazine 'The Strad' Sept 2005 - "Passing Through the Woods"
where he uses CT scanning to measure 45 Gesù' violins with 4500 measurements.
http://www.bormanviolins.com/Articles/Strad%20Article.pdf

And one more closer to the ground that I ended up reading that might interest some -
"Photography for Instrument Makers"
http://www.bormanviolins.com/Articles/VSAP%20Borman%20145-62.pdf

Buenos noches,

john