Last month I had the opportunity to fill a gap in my luthier's education. Even during the Redwood Violin project where I made a violin from scratch, I did not cut and process my own wood, yet this is something that some violin makers do for themselves, and I had...
As part of the Violinabox project I carried the violin down to Mexico. The first stop was to visit Damian Stoppani, one of the most unusual violinmakers you'll ever come across. Originally from Villa Constitución, Argentina, Damian now lives and works in a 1970's...
Definition Films is a young video production company in Santa Rosa. About five years ago the founder, Justin Liddell, asked if they could film me building a violin. They collected hours of video over 17 days of shooting....and then everything went quiet. Despite the...
Strad Magazine (March 2023) published an article on my Off-Beat Violins There's some online companion material , and the full online feature for subscribers
There’s a great feature on Mia Pixley and her Ripple cello in this months Strings Magazine. This project was so much fun…..and it’s still making waves! To read the full article you'll have to subscribe to Strings
The concept of the project is covered more fully in a previous post. This post follows the violin's progress through the hands of 10 violinmakers around the world as they each add to the instrument. The project can be followed in more depth on Instagram: @Violinabox....
Violinmakers often like to collaborate on making instruments. Its a great way to learn from each other and has been major feature of the annual Oberlin violinmaker's Camp for years The idea This year at Oberlin a group of us decided it would be fun to build a violin...
This is so gratifying! Thanks to every one who has been involved, this is far from a solo effort. You can get a digital version of the Strings story. Also read more about the project on The Redwood Violin Website Earlier Press The project also received local press...
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.
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.