Finished Octave Violin

 It is finished!

At least, it is finished until I mess with it some more. Normal people, if they aren't satisfied with their sound, practice more. I tend to get out the Exacto knives and chip away at something.

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It could stand another few coats of varnish.

It is so easy to play, and so much fun -- that much bass power under the chin is likely to go to one's head! I tried it as a viola and didn't like it nearly as well; besides, it didn't seem worth learning a whole new clef just to go one string deeper.

In time, I will fit the rosewood pegs from the fitting set. The chinrest needs some tweaking to be comfortable, though, so I'm playing it bare.

The only issue is a certain buzz at several frequencies. I am going to diligently ignore it for now, because I suspect it is a loose lining because I mixed my glue too weakly when gluing up the body. One day I will therefore have to open up the body and figure it out. Today is not that day. Today it's time to play!

Bridges and Resonance

Experimenting on bridges is fun and relatively inexpensive. Soundpost placement is the other spot you can really alter the sound of your instrument in an easily-reversible way, but soundposts are quite annoying so you need to be fairly motivated to do this. Bridges are prettier, too.

For directions, read Michael Darnton's bridge-fitting section, in the Setup chapter, and makingtheviolin.com has some good basics as well.

As a disclaimer, you probably won't have too much luck going crazily experimental on a standard violin bridge. More resonance, I have discovered, is not automatically better, and the standard is standard for a reason. That being said, most bridges are poorly fitted and very far from the correct spec and you can vastly improve your sound by buying a couple blanks and making well-fitted feet and the correct string angle and lowering or raising the action to your taste.

For an octave violin, this is not the case, since nothing else is standard. My theory is that this instrument needs all the help it can get to resonate those big notes on such a small body. I made a fairly standard bridge and a very open bridge to compare.

The open bridge was much louder and more responsive than the standard one. It is a huge improvement -- from not-really-playable-in-public to useful as a performance instrument. I can't recommend it enough. Besides, it looks cool.

Fingerboard

My fingerboard (the one with the kit) came pretty close to spec already; the nut came as a blank rectangle of ebony. I basically just followed the instructions for the nut and fingerboard on makingtheviolin.com, but to viola size.

To minimize buzzing possibilities with those big bass strings I hope to fit, I trimmed the end in a curve mirroring the compensated tailpiece I have ordered. The jigsaw actually worked nicely for this, with minimal chipping. There was a little splitting on the exiting edge. In retrospect, it might have helped to clamp some scrap wood flush with the edge for a cleaner result. However, I am, overall, pleased with it. It is rather decorative, at least.




After gluing on the fingerboard and nut, after varnishing the violin, I scraped and sanded the fingerboard and neck perfectly flush and smooth with each other. Since I have small hands I enjoy a very slender neck. I sanded with very fine sandpaper and burnished it all with leather.

If your instrument color is dark, you will probably want to stain the exposed neck with coffee because the naked maple is a little too much raw contrast with a brown stain. But since my instrument is so light, the natural maple seems right.