My heart sank as I withdrew them from the cobbled-together triangular mailing box.
The one with the silver fittings -- turned out to be completely metal! What the heck?
The faux snakewood one had the head completely broken off. Not only off, but missing. Not even in the box.
The last one, the nondescript one, had cracks and daylight showing in the frog chamber of the stick.
Oh my.
I wrote a sternly worded note to the seller requesting my money back. Then I googled just what is an all-metal bow. Who has ever heard of such a thing?
Turns out, it's not such a bad thing. They were big money in the late 1800s and preferred by the top violinists to the top artisan pernambuco ones that sell for big money nowadays. But mine isn't one of those. It's a Heddon bow.
http://www.google.com/patents/US2252929
James Heddon went on to have a great fishing rod company, but in 1941 he patented a steel-aluminum violin bow with a distinctive screw. It was instantly recognizable. They dented and bent easily so are quite rare. It's worth about $50 -- maybe not anything out of Antiques Roadshow, but it's kind of cool! And apparently more than serviceable for music-making. I cancelled my request for money back.
When the bow hair comes in the mail, I'll get to see for myself if it's a keeper.
Now to puzzle out what to do with the other two...
I am a Juilliard trained professional violinist who owns vintage stamped certified bows by big name makers like Eugene Sartory, EA Ouchard, JB Vuillaume, and Albert Nurnberger (has a photo of Nurnberger in the frog eyelet). I also own 2 very inexpensive Heddon bows in mint condition (one caramel colored, one dark coffee colored)
ReplyDeleteFor live performances, I prefer my Heddon bows over all the other wooden vintage masterpieces I own. In fact, I pretty much play on Heddon bows exclusively nowadays.
Heddon bows are perfectly crafted in a way that the aluminum is straight and true. Yet they are also flexible enough to handle the most extreme technical demands, including Paganini's 24 Caprices. The Heddon bows have a wider expressive and technical range than any of my classic wooden bows, especially in the mp and mf dynamics that only the best bows are truly capable of playing. If I had to describe the unique tone created by a Heddon bow, I would call it "full toned aerodynamic brilliant".
Had I been the one receiving your box of bows, I'd literally have jumped up in joy and celebrated had I seen your Heddon. It's damn near impossible to get a Heddon nowadays - the supply of available Heddons is virtually gone. I had to hunt far and wide to get my 2nd Heddon, and I bought mine from Robertson's where the Heddon wasn't even listed for sale! I've got students who have Heddon bows along with other expensive bows and they all swear by the Heddons like I do!
I'm a career professional violinist and collector who's tried and owned some of the very best bows ever made, so I'm not some clueless newbie who doesn't know what's good. I also don't have anything to gain by touting these cheapo reapo Heddons, in fact, I am endangering the limited remaining available stock of Heddons by writing this glowing review on them. But amidst all the public dismissal of Heddon bows as useless junk, I figured that at least ONE voice (MY voice) would speak out about how great these Heddon bows actually are. To me, Heddon bows are the best kept secret in violin playing and no other wooden or even current (2017) synthetic bow truly comes close to touching them.
Thank you for the review! I haven't blogged about it yet, but I restored another violin for my husband for Christmas, and it came with another Heddon bow. So I accidentally bought two Heddon bows in one year! Do you want one?
DeleteThey're fantastically easy to play with! The Audacity waterfall graph shows a response that is much more even across all strings than with a wood bow. It's almost certainly confirmation bias, but I do feel the tone is less warm than a wood bow provides. But it is definitely more reliable and predictable, so I prefer it for performing amplified. They're very cool!
I just rebuilt a Heddon viola bow, liked it so much, I bought all of Robertson's stock. Currently have six--three viola, two violin, and a 3/4 violin.
ReplyDeleteI put a new Paulus viola frog on the rebuild I did, and re-wrapped silk over the ugly wire lapping, replaced thumb leather with black goatskin, and repainted the stick.
The one I have has a prominent fundamental at A4--it is very bright, and I can see why these are popular with fiddlers, or anybody playing amplified.
I'm probably going to try powder-coating the ones I got from Robertsons. They all need rebuild...