Rickert and Ringholz Musical Instruments

One for the historical accuracy know-it-alls

I don't normally write such obnoxious blog postings, but I this is an exception. We've picked up some discussion on blogs and mailing lists suggesting that the machine tuners on one version of our 1860s style cigar box fiddle are historically incorrect...WRONG!

Everybody who actually knows the history of stringed musical instruments knows that geared tuners similar to those used today were invented in the early 1800s. The first Martin guitar (1833) has geared tuners. You can see a picture of it at the C.F. Martin website.

The current issue of 'American Lutherie' (Fall 2007, #91) has a very detailed article with lots of pictures of a pre-1860s Martin with, yes, geared side-mounted machine tuners.

What is VERY historically incorrect for anyone claiming to have a Civil War era cigar box fiddle or reproduction of one is pasted on artwork on the box. That did not start until some time in the 1890s. Before that, boxes were hot branded, stamped, and so forth, but no paper artwork like today's cigar boxes.

OK, I'll return to being nice :-)

Think About that Chinese Fiddle

This is NOT the promised third posting about changes we are going to make to www.FiddleandBowStore.com. That is coming soon, but this rant came out of my fingertips first. If it sounds a bit like sour grapes. I'll admit to it now in order to save you the trouble of pointing this out in your emails (why don't people use the comment feature of blogs?)

We at Rickert & Ringholz have been able to determine that a lot of violin students (actually, their parents), as well as a surprisingly large number of adult fiddlers, get "great deals" on instruments from China. All the so-called top-name online stores (won't name them...can't afford to be sued this week) sell Chinese instruments, using marketing verbage in the product descriptions that is the equivalent of polishing a t**d.

The ready availability of Chinese instruments is a primary reason for why people don't buy high quality instruments, which happen to be expensive. I guess we are all looking for a great deal...you know, the hundred year fiddle from the old man at the flea market or yard sale who doesn't know its real value, the $100 "steal" on eBay, and so on. OK, every now and then you get lucky, especially at yard sales. Whether this is morally defensible is another question altogether (the correct answer is NO. it's not!).

As far as eBay goes, you are more often than not going to end up with a piece of junk or a NEW Chinese instrument made in the "Italian" or the "French" or the whatever tradition that sounds classy. Ask yourself this: do you really think that a professional eBay vendor (look at the seller's number of sales when you buy) is going to NOT make a profit? Think again.

This brings us to back to Chinese violins. The cheap ones are either painted or so heavily varnished that you can't tell what instrument is under all of that gloss. The better ones, costing several hundred dollars, have a very distinctive feature...perfect "old spruce" top and unbelievably well-flamed sides and back. Hate to burst your bubble, but the flaming is a really good paint job under the varnish and the perfect "old spruce" top is a printed shrink "skin", sort of like that used on cheap wall paneling. We'll show you some pictures after we have our upcoming "radical de-construction" of a Chinese violin. This may involve fireworks that are legal in the States where they are sold...look for it on YouTube under DoctorFiddle in the next week or so.

The techniques mentioned above keep the costs down, which keeps the sales price low, but the unethically cheap labor really keeps the costs and sales price down.

Think about all of these things as you play your POS fiddle made by underpaid, and often under-aged labor.

To paraphrase William Morris, one of the founders of the Arts and Crafts movement (known chiefly for his wallpaper prints), who was no Angel himself as a business-person, but who wrote many on-point essays: Quality products designed to last a long time cost more money than garbage that merchants who provide it to you are secretly ashamed to sell you...that is if they let themselves introspect beyond the greatest cop-out of the last several centuries..."It's just business; nothing personal."

Note: Needless to say, we don't sell Chinese instruments at www.FiddleandBowStore.com. The closest thing we have to a sweat shop is our own design studio and workshops in Atlanta and Birmingham.

The Violin Was Perfected 300 Years Ago...Hogwash!

This is one of those quick, terse blog entries, because I am supposed to be cleaning up my shop to start on prototyping several new instruments.

With the general slowdown of the Holiday period and having the flu (should have gotten that flu shot), I have been looking at a lot of violin and fiddle related websites and blogs and have seen far too many assertions that the violin was perfected centuries ago. This ranks up there on the idiocy scale as the statement by the Director of the U.S. Patent Office early in the 20th Century that the Office was no longer needed, because everything worth inventing had already been invented.

The violin was not perfected three hundred or even 400 years ago (I prefer the Magginis of the early 1600s myself). What was perfected was a basic design pattern for a particular type of violin adopted for particular types of music. Heck, even Thomas Jefferson, who was in debt up to his ears, but managed to get an Amati and one of the first Tourte bows (which were considered as outrageous as IncrediBows when first introduced) did not dare take his Amati to the local pub for a fiddling jam session. He took a Dancing Master's Pochette, for which he had a leather saddle case made. The best pochette in the world would not have compared to an Amati, Strad or Guarnerius, but it was absolute perfection for Tom J's immediate problem, getting to a pub and back home on horseback, with a lot of drinking and playing in between.

That's all for the moment...back to the shop to get ready for our next effort at divergence from stupid perfection. Probably something old Antonio did a number of times. By all accounts, he was just as irreverent about stupid traditions as the irreverence embodied in these words.

More to come I am sure. Let the comments fly, but keep it clean, as I have the "Block User" button and I'm not afraid to use it :-)

DR

A Big Surprise to Us

Judging by emails I recieve, many readers of this blog have figured out that I (Don Rickert) am not just a fiddler, fiddle enthusiast, luthier (one who makes stringed instruments) and musical instrument designer, but an academic type as well. I will admit it...I do have a Ph.D. from the George Washington University School of Business and am adjunct faculty member in the Industrial Design Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology, better known as Georgia Tech.

At GA Tech, I teach all the biz school kinds stuff that new Industrial Designers need to know like NPD (New Product Development), design research methods, statistics, market research, consumer research, human factors/ergonomics, etc. Knowing this, you might not be surprised that I research the daylights out of every musical instrument concept that Rickert & Ringholz designs for sales potential, market size, and so forth.

Most of the research we do is called Consumer Research or 'Consumer Insights' and involves actual musicians and much of this research occurs in their natural habitats like fiddlers' conventions, 'sessions' in pubs, Scottish Highland games, Irish music festivals, Saint Patrick's Day celebrations, etc. By the time we start producing a new instrument in any kind of significant quantities, there have been at least five prototypes built and tested. Basically, we have the situation pretty well sussed...or so we think.

Well, this is one of the few times that I will admit to completly missing key opportunities due to asking the wrong questions of the wrong people. I am telling you that we would NEVER had pursued cigar box fiddles or Dancing Master's Kits (really skinny fiddles, also known as 'pochettes' or 'pocket fiddles'), had I relied solely on consumer research.

In the case of cigar box fiddles, we knew that people found them interesting, but felt that people would not actually buy them, at least for the kind of money we would have to charge to make ones that played well and sounded good. In the case of 18th Century pochettes, no way! Fortunately for us, we discovered the surprise potential for cigar box fiddles by attending more music festivals in North Carolina and Virginia and keeping our eyes open. The pochette story is one of the interaction of plain dumb luck and YouTube.

The following two postings briefly describe the cigar box fiddle and pochette stories. Bonus, these postings contain links to some of the best damned fiddling you will hear today (except your own, of course).

A Big Surprise, Part 2: Cigar Box Fiddles

Click on images for larger view.

From the first time that we ever brought a cigar box fiddle to a festival (I believe it was the Tennessee Valley Old-Time Fiddlers' Convention in Athens, AL), we knew that cigar box fiddles attracted potential customers to our vendor tent, especially if there was anyone playing one who was any good at it. People thought that they (the cigar box fiddles) were interesting buy never actually bought them.

Just when it seemed like cigar box fiddles were never going to be more than a crowd attractor, we were fortunate enough to be invited to set up shop at the first annual Hoppin' John Fiddlers' Convention in Silk Hope, NC. As had become standard, we had a 'modern' (made from a new cigar box we got in a cigar store) cigar box fiddle as well as a Civil War era replica model. It was at Hoppin' John that the proverbial 2x4 hit us up side the head...CIVIL WAR RE-ENACTORS! It seemed that every other person at Hoppin' John was in one North Carolina re-enactor regiment or another. These, people, as crazy about really really Old-Time music (before it was called that) as us, actually care about historically accurate period fiddles, fiddle music and playing technique...to quote one of these truly cool folks, in response to our offer to put a chin rest on a fiddle he was about to play: "What do I need a chinrest for?"

Checking into matters a bit further, we discovered that there are a whole lot of 'authentic campaigners' in all the places Rickert & Ringholz Musical Instruments had NOT been a vendor before, like Northern Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina. I suddenly remembered the re-enaction events I used to attend in Maryland and Northern Virginia, some had as many as 10,000 re-enactors. Actually played fiddle with a Confederate Irish brigade once or twice. We are starting to explore selling our Re-Enactor Cigar Box fiddles through the network of specialty stores (called Suttleries) set up at the larger events.

We want to hear from those of you who play fiddle, banjo, or more exotic instruments, such as soap box cello, as part of your re-enacting, presumably while encamped and not actually on the battlefield. There could even be a deeply-discounted or even free fiddle in it for you if you agree to be photgraphed and/or recorded while playing one of our instruments at a battle re-enaction event (Yes, you've got to be in uniform!). You can reply, either by commenting to this posting, or by email at drickert@bellsouth.net.

Now, for a treat of hearing a really great banjo player and period-style fiddler playing several of our instruments. Click here to see and hear on YouTube.

A Rickert & Ringholz Instrument that Almost Didn't Happen (Part 1)

We have been making small violins and fiddles for several years. Some of these instruments have been purely design studies, such as the 'Blue Electric', and some have been prototypes for possible production instruments, such as the 'Barchetta', the Take-Apart Travel/Practice Violin, the Carbon Fiber/Wood composite Travel/Practice Violin, The Silent Travel/Practice Violin, The 'Travel Master' Travel Violin. These instruments are pictured below (click on thumbnails for full-size images).

Barchetta

 

Take-Apart

   

Carbon Fiber/Wood Composite

The "Silent"

The Travel Master

See and hear the Travel Master on YouTube.

   

The Instrument that Almost Didn't Happen (Part 2)

We learned a lot by field testing the various small violins that can best be described as modern versions of the Dancing Master's Kit, Pochette or pocket fiddle. Our first two models (Barchetta and Take-Apart) had removable necks, the Take-Apart going a step further with an elaborate set of mechanisms, which allowed the instrument to stay pretty much in tune after dissassembly and reassembly. While very cool, we and our testers quickly realized that the instruments were pretty small to begin with, and there was no real benefit to the removable necks.

The Carbon-Fiber/Wood Composite model and the "Silent" model, while doing exactly what they were supposed to to, allowing quiet practice with instruments that responded to the bow just like full size violins (unlike electric violins), did not demonstrate well to anyone except the person playing the instruments. Instruments that do not demo well don't sell.

Further design work led to our new Travel Master Pochette, which is almost a full inch narrower than the Silent Trave/Practice Violins (3.35" vs. 4.25"). Through the use of various accoustic tricks, including a tuned port, we were able to the achieve full-bodied volume, sufficient for jam sessions. This is demonstrated in the YouTube demo, referenced in Part 1 of this article.

While developing the Travel Master, we also decided to build a replica of a real 18th Century Dancing Master's Kit, copying one from 1780 that now resides in a museum in Glasgow, Scotland. It, like the original, is designed to be played on the arm (known as 'Baroque Style'), and has neither a chinrest nor a shoulder rest. Our testers, all of whom are either violinists or modern style fiddlers did not see any market potential for this instrument, even though it sounds great. The problem...playing in the Baroque style is a skill possessed by very few fiddlers and even fewer violinists these days, or so we thought...

Just for fun, we sent the 18th Century Kit along with a Travel Master to a potential customer for evaluation. We were sure that he would be sending the 18th Century Kit back and keeping the Travel Master. What we did not know was that there is this whole group of Irish fiddlers and other practicioners of early music out there who play in the ancient style. See the YouTube video that this amazing player made. Based on the YouTube video, we have sold several more instruments (we're calling it the 'Neil Gow Pochette') in just a matter of weeks.

Baritone (a.k.a. Octave) Violins/Fiddles

One of the first things V-Gear set out to do is to design and build the best acoustic baritone violin in the world. There are several instruments referred to as 'baritones'. You can find out about this topic by reading the extended post, especially information about the New Violin Family, also known as the Violin Octet. When we say baritone violin or baritone fiddle, we are talking about an instrument with the exact nut to bridge length (just under 13") as a standard violin or fiddle, but tuned an octave lower.

We have extensively tested several models with professional and amateur old time, bluegrass and Scottish fiddlers, expert level viola players, 20 or so violinists in the Atlanta Youth Symphony Orchestra and a former violinist in the Russian Chamber Orchestra.

One model is based on an enlarged Chanot-type (i.e. cornerless or 'guitar-shaped) violin, another on a modified 14" (i.e. student) viola and yet another on the concave back 'Cradle of Harmony', patented by the artist William Sidney Mount in 1852! We have judged further work on the small viola to be a waste of time and are evaluating where to go with the Chanot-type instrument (which actually sounds pretty good).

Photos of the Chanot-type baritone being played: One of the players is Natalie Haas, known for here 'New Age'/Traditional fusion style on the 'cello.

Laura Risk, one of the finest fiddlers (and teacher) on the planet.

A very fine viola player and fiddler giving the Chanot-type baritone prototype a try. Her playing was beautiful and her insights were extremely helpful.

   

Want to here it? Click here for an all too brief sample of Natalie Haas warming up with some nice Darol Anger riffs.

Several photos of Natalie appear below.

      

We are ready to go into production with the Sidney Mount inspired instrument. We made a number of modifications, including adding about a lot of airspace by extending the rib width from the standard 30 mm. to 42 mm., utilizing a bassbar based on current best practices (not a Zaret Patent Bassbar!), a viola soundpost to equalize the volume of the higher and lower strings. The top plate is made from Western Red Cedar, know by classical guitar experts for its low rich tembre. Finally, the soundholes are of the Chanot-type and smaller than standard practice in order to increase 'turbulance' inside the instrument. The result is an instrument with unbelievable projection and a nice deep tembre (unlike some other instruments, which are loud but 'thin')...this instrument sounds like a fine 'cello!

Is Snakewood and Alternative to Pernambuco?

No!

Snakewood is for Baroque bows, which are used for playing Baroque music on Baroque violins. The wood is heavy and does not hold the camber (reverse curve) that is so critical to Tourte (i.e. modern) bows. Francois Tourte explicitly rejected snakewood as being suitable for his bows. We nearly cried when we heard that a vendor (yes, a competitor) sold a snakewood Tourte bow to a young fiddle student who was considering buying an IncrediBow (OK, yes from us).

Now, you might ask, why not use a Baroque bow for modern playing. We'll get into the details some other time, but suffice it to say that Tourte did not invent the modern bow just to be different.

Snakewood looks really cool, but it sucks for modern violin/fiddle bows. We sell a carbon fiber bow with an imitation snakewood finish and will post the picture in an update to this post, but gotta' run over to Radio Shack now to get some components for our new electric octave violin, which we are showing tomorrow.

Got comments...bring them on!

D.R.

It's All About the Bow

Assuming that you have at least a moderate-quality fiddle or violin (that is properly set up) and some skill at playing it, NOTHING matters to your playing, the sound your playing makes and your development as a bowed string musician than the bow. The old rule of thumb that we old people were taught is that you should spend at least as much on your bow as you do your fiddle or violin. How many of us really followed that advice. Especially those of us who practice the fiddle discipline played on the cheapest Brazilwood or fiberglass bow that we could get our hands on.

Until you play a great bow, you just can't get it--you play a lot better with a high-quality bow. Not too long ago, a great bow could cost thousands of dollars. Invariably, great bows were always made of Pernambuco wood, or occasionally Snakewood (but Snakewood is more common for Baroque bows, and that is a different topic than today's). Perambuco bows can be real a joy to use; but there is a serious shortage of Pernambuco wood, so buying a new one could be considered irresponsible, and a good old one is going to cost you some big bucks.

Today, you can get a carbon fiber or carbon graphite (they are slightly different composite materials) bow for under $500. In the case of the IncrediBow, you can get one for about $150 or less. High-end carbon fiber bows that I have played are better than ANY pernambuco bow I have played (that should generate some comments!). Being in the fiddle/violin and bow business (www.rickertandringholz.com and running the online Fiddle and Bow Store: www.fiddleandbowstore.com) and having observed hundreds making bow buying decisions, I can report the following 'consumer insights':

1. The majority of potential customers enter the purchase dialog with the notion that they want a wood bow.
2. We take more old Pernambuco wood bows in trade as partial payment for high-end carbon fiber bows than we sell.
3. We sell more carbon fiber bows than wood bows. In fact, I cannot remember the last time we actually sold a wood bow.
4. The new generation of "braided carbon fiber" bows (carbon fiber fabric wound around a core and encased in a resin) perform better than the older style extruded carbon fiber bows.
5. The majority of bows we sell are of the braided carbon fiber type (and these are the most expensive...in the $300-$500 price range).
6. The second most popular seller is the IncrediBow; which is maligned mostly by those who have never played one.

One more point about bows: The best bows available are all made in the USA. Even the old London based P&H bows are now made in the US. Our list of the great carbon fiber bows--Glasser, P&H, CodaBow. We think that the IncrediBow, made in Arkansas, is a very good bow and excellent value.