Instruments – Carruthers Violins

Interview with Laurie Niles of violinist.com

Oct 4, 2020 | Media, News, Off-Beat Violins

Longtime violin-maker Andrew Carruthers has struck on an idea: that perhaps new violins can be inspired by something other than old violins.
Not that the San Francisco Bay-area luthier has any problem with old violins — he’s studied the great masters and reveres their work. In fact, he’s made hundreds of stringed instruments based on Guarneri del Gesùs, Stradivaris, Montaganas and more.
But these days he also has been looking to nature, geometry, architecture for inspiration in his instrument-making.

Cellular fiddles Part 2: X’s and O’s

Sep 27, 2020 | Ideas and inspirations, Instruments, News, Off-Beat Violins, Violin

In part 1, I described a plan to make a pair of violins with structural features that I think will have effects on the way those instruments sound. I decided to base the designs for the two violins around two of the vibrational modes that have been studied and used as tools by many violinmakers in an attempt to control the tonal qualities of our instruments. This second part describes the designs that I came up with for the two fiddles I intend to build.

Cellular Fiddles Part 1: Braces, Modes and the Possibilities of Shaping Sound

Sep 21, 2020 | Ideas and inspirations, Instruments, Off-Beat Violins, Violin

The idea of "Cellular Fiddles" has evolved out of two earlier projects. The Dimpled Viola made a feature of some of the visually interesting rough carving of a violin that normally get lost in the finished instrument. The Turtle Fiddle which took one of the visual...

Turtle Fiddle

Aug 24, 2020 | Ideas and inspirations, Instruments, Off-Beat Violins, Violin, Violin Making

This is a follow up to the Dimpled Viola project and develops some of the ideas sparked by that project. With the viola I made an instrument that made a feature of the gouge work that appears in early stages of carving an instrument but that normally gets completely...

Dimpled Viola, an Etude. Part 2, Finishing

Jun 15, 2020 | Ideas and inspirations, Instruments, Off-Beat Violins, Varnish & Finishing, Viola

In the first part of this study I constructed a viola emphasizing a part of the construction process, the carving, which is visually very interesting but that most players never get to see. In this second part, I consider the surface finish and explore the decorative...

A Busman’s holiday part 2. Finishing the guitar.

Jun 12, 2020 | Guitar, Instruments

Finishing the guitar was pretty much a pain and took way longer than I expected. At first I was going to use violin varnish which I'm more familiar with, but having gone so far down the "conventional guitar" road, I felt I should go all the way. Unlike violins,...

The Dimpled Viola, an Etude. Part 1 – Form

Jun 7, 2020 | Ideas and inspirations, Instruments, Viola, Violin Making

A study of violin aesthetics This is another project that approaches violin making from a slightly different angle in hope of gaining a deeper understanding of the craft. This study is concerned with the visual rather than the functional side of violinmaking, though...

My father’s wood carving

Jun 1, 2020 | Ideas and inspirations, Off-Beat Violins, Varnish & Finishing

My father was a sculptor who worked in everything from marble and bronze to sintered sand and telegraph poles. in some of his wood carving he used similar techniques to some that I've ended up using in violin making. Whereas I would be obliged to lose all traces of...

A busman’s holiday. Building a nylon string guitar.

Apr 28, 2020 | Guitar, Instruments, News

Luthierie in the time of Covid With the arrival of Corona Virus I realized that business would be slow for a while so I decided to take a little time out for some of the violin related projects that I could never quite find the time for. The idea of making myself...

Steel string guitar, Circa 1982

Apr 28, 2020 | Guitar, Instruments

My introduction to Luthierie The first instrument I made was a steel string guitar. I'd seen someone in my Industrial Design course in college make a guitar and I thought it was the coolest thing. A couple of years later, I'd moved to Berkeley, California. I had my...