Designing a tailpiece

I have the fingerboard pretty much shaped and decided to get working on the tailpiece.
I've made a few and used store bought ones. On the shorter models I've made, store bought are always too long. Since this is a "standard" length Strad at 357 or so the store bought would work. But I have the ebony fingerboard that actually looks like wood so I figured I'd make a matching tailpiece. The first question is how to make it. You could to it empirically, and copy a bought tailpiece. But how do know it is right? I set about to design one from the ground up.

I have two tailpieces sitting around. One a cheap, black (looks like plastic, but isn't) round one, and another rosewood one with the two flat angles on it. They just picture them in the catalog, and don't name them by style, so they are just round and angled. They are both within a mm in length, around 114mm. The length is just right for this violin. The hole spacing, slots, half-round lip that sticks up (I have no idea what they call that), and the outside shape is virtually identical. It looks like the angled one may have slightly lower E and G holes. What would be the implication of that? I had to do some trig. I've figured out string angles before, but didn't get the actual angle. Coming up with those measurements brought some surprises. The D string has the steepest angle, followed by the A. The E string has the flattest angle followed by the G. Lowering the G and E strings at the tailpiece would bring them closer in relationship to the A and D in between them. Doing this the G and E strings aren't technically heading directly to the top of the saddle, but they have to go there anyway because that is where the tailpiece attaches. The A and D are directly in line to the saddle.
On a violin where the simple string angle I measured before is on the steep side... 157 degrees or a little more, having the E and G at flatter angles may be a good idea. The difference I figured between the inside and outside string was about 2.5 degrees. That's more than the difference between models. The 42mm radius on the black tailpiece doesn't seem like it would work at all. That one would flatten the outer two strings over 2 degrees more. Maybe I'm on the wrong track. Maybe I'm just plain wrong. Oh well. I'll make up my "experimental" tailpiece. If it doesn't work, there's always store bought.

Odds and ends

The photo is of our backyard last fall.
I've been doing some things, but they don't look like much. I have the back area tuned. Ended up with 3rds, 5th, minor7th and an octave, just like it's supposed to. Of course sometimes it takes a few listens to figure out what you got. It sounds like D when you tap it, but it rings at E. Go figure. I thought they would be the same. Ha! I just checked and 285, or around D is one of the prominent modes on the free plate, maybe mode 4? I took it off the fixture to check it's stiffness. It's 4g lighter and it lost about 4hrz, so the stiffness is still around where everyone says it should be. Everyone? Isn't that what your kids say..."But EVERYONE does that." Feels really stiff to me. I thought these things were supposed to move. I'm tuning the belly now. It seems to have C# as the fundamental, that's a semi tone lower. Just about what EVERYBODY says it should be. I'm sure when I glued it on the ribs it rang at over 360, 272 is a lot lower than that. Maybe that is mode 4 as well. After I glue the back on I'll pop the belly off and give it a check. I'm still learning so I need to see what I actually did, to see where I'm going.

So the numbers are coming out close to where they should be according to everybody. It is wood shaped like a violin body so that isn't too surprising. What is surprising is how a great violin can be just slightly different than a so so, or bad violin. There is no way to control all of the parameters. The belly, the back, the ribs, the neck, the bridge, the soundpost, the fingerboard, the strings. Any difference, any variance, and the result is different. There are more things going on than you can keep track of. The world is the same way. The snow just melted and you can finally see the ground. What is amazing is that under the snow plants were growing. Daffodils (deer eat tulips), mums, and other hardy perennials are already pushing out of the ground. Things going on that you don't see. In your life things go on underneath, that aren't seen by others or even yourself. The things going on underneath have great effect on what comes out on the outside. Fill the inside with God's love and the outside will be beautiful.

Wrong way to make a fixture

Well the fingerboard holder didn't work. It may have worked if I made it out of maple, and not spruce! The soft wood just squishes and is useless. So I just did it the old way. Rough it out with a 9" plane, then get the 42mm radius set with a wooden plane I made up. I finish it up with my favorite scraper, a plane blade, and the blade out of the wooden plane. I could probably keep the blade in the wooden plane, but it came loose, so I left it out. I'm a scraper guy. Some are file guys, plane guys, sandpaper guys. I'm a scraper guy. The blank is still big. I ran into an aberration in this blank. Not as bad as the last blank I scrapped, but annoying. Most of it may disappear, but some will have to be hidden.
I have been playing around trigging out different violin sting angles and neck sets. See, math is fun! It started after my Ole Bull fingerboard moved down, and the belly moved up. Turns out the dryer vent was loose, and the instrument was absorbing the excess moisture. People on maestronet.com were suggesting some things and some said new instruments move. The only one I've seen move is the Montagnana with the outrageous arch. It bulged up some in the upper and lower bouts. Some said they set the fingerboard projection higher, say 27mm, in anticipation that it will drop after being strung up for a while. So I did some calculations and came up with this:




On a baroque Amati, they would have a straight neck, put whatever bridge height they felt proper, and fabricate a fingerboard to fit underneath. Later, they started morising the neck and tipping it back. I wonder if they did it to make fingerboard replacements easier, and then found players liked the thinner angled neck. Anyway, the change didn't really change the string angle much. The models arch height, length and stop makes more of a difference, and then it still is not that much. The included angles run between 157 to 159 degrees. The modern instruments have constraints built into the formula so each projection (marked elev) will only give a small range of string angle/neck angle that will give the proper (6-6.5mm) neck step. The shorter instrument would be a Bergonzi or Guadagnini and the Maggini is actually a model SMALLER than the original. One thing of note; the baroque instrument would have about the same string angle, but with the shorter neck they would also have a shorter string length(except the Maggini). The tension on the strings would be lighter, even though the string angles are the same as modern instruments. I believe this is all correct, but I could be wrong. Let me know. Don't know how I got this blue and underlined!