Looking for a Five string with a solid, totally credible C-String plus the brilliance and nimbleness of a regular fiddle in the higher registers?
In 2019 Brandon Godman and I set out to make the best five-sting fiddles available
With a Carruthers Five you get
- Warm, well balanced tone. Easy response. Volume and projection
- A credible C-string while retaining the brilliance and nimbleness of a regular fiddle in the higher registers
- A violin compact enough to make the transition from Four-string fiddle easy (Plus it fits in most regular violin cases!)
These instruments are built by an internationally recognized and awarded classical violinmaker with 40 years of professional experience, and with the Backing of the country’s most experienced and knowledgeable Five String Dealers, Brandon Godman.
Where can you try a Carruthers 5 string fiddle?
lots of cool places
What the players say
“I played one note and knew I had to own that 5-string fiddle.“
Daniel Boner
Director, Bluegrass, Old-Time, and Roots Music
East Tennessee State University
It has the tone and response that only a few 5-string fiddles possess
Having owned probably six 5-string fiddles through the years, including John Silakowski’s first ever 5-string built for the late Randy Howard, this one stands proudly above them all.
I simply can’t live without it!
“I started playing it and it was explosive. Miles of projection and a beautiful tone.”
Ivan Strunin
Athens, Georgia
It was a Saturday morning and I was visiting my friends at Casey Driessen’s fiddle camp and waiting for a bow to be rehaired. I have three really wonderful five-string violins made by repeated luthiers, all of which I love to play so I can honestly say I had no intention of purchasing another five-string fiddle. Well my friend Fred Carpenter was there representing Brandon Godman’s “The Violin Shop” and had many fiddles to play. I picked up a few and then I picked up the Carruthers. I started playing it and it was explosive. Miles of projection and a beautiful tone. Well I had to have it. I’d never heard a fiddle with so much projection. The tone is balanced and rich. Full on the low end as you would expect from a five, but the high end is sweet and with the same fullness as the low end. Equally as important, so you are not taking just my word for it, every fiddler and violinist who has tried my Carruthers falls in love with it.
As to the instrument itself, it is beautiful especially with Andrew’s unique scroll design. I realize Andrew is new to the world of five-string fiddles but he has clearly established himself in the pantheon of premier five-string fiddle builders
“It has the oldtime grit I use in my playing, the high end violinish zing and the awesome power of the low C.”
Owen Ragland
Sonora, California
I had been playing and gigging on my first full size fiddle which was over 10 years old. A solid instrument I had picked out when I was 12, it had helped me fill countless bar, club, and festival air with the sound of the fiddle. I had my mind set on getting a five string and had just started to seriously look when I picked up a Carruthers instrument at The Fiddle Mercantile booth at a California Bluegrass Association festival. I felt immediately I had found my instrument and would have gone home with it if I had more money than your average professional bluegrass musician in there 20. I came back each day I was at the festival to play it, and went to work in the coming months saving and begging for money. A little under a year later I had the money together! I called the Fiddle Mercantile and was crestfallen to learn that my fiddle had just sold.
Unwilling to give up, I contacted Andrew about the possibility of building another similar instrument: and to my excitement he agreed to do it! He and Brandon Godman (the owner of the fiddle mercantile) arranged for me to get Andy’s 3rd five string.
A few years later, my Carruthers is my new workhorse instrument. It’s played hundreds of shows with me, rode in vans and cars, flown in planes, and come out of the case to be shown off to just about every other professional fiddle player I’ve run into along the way. It has the oldtime grit I use in my playing, the high end violinish zing some 5 strings lack and the awesome power of the low C. It and my D28 are by far my most prized physical possessions.
Classical violin making meets cutting edge fiddling
The five string fiddle is a recent development in the music world. Adventurous and creative players are finding new ways to use it to broaden their musical palette.
When Brandon Godman suggested that I should try making a five string fiddle the idea had a lot of appeal to me. It offered the chance to:
- apply the Classical violin design and violin making techniques I have been honing for years to a novel problem.
- Work in a developing field where the norms are still being established and where innovation is needed.
- Work with musicians who are excited to be exploring new musical possibilities.
From a violinmaker’s point of view a five string violin presents some interesting challenges (Just the sort of thing I like!)
- How to produce a credible sounding C string while retaining a sparkling fiddle sound in the higher registers?
- How to do this in a fiddle that is small enough for traditional players to make an easy transition to?
Collaboration:
We set out to make the best five string fiddles available
I bought: 35 years experience as a successful professional violinmaker in the rigorous Classical music world
I was classically trained at violinmaking school and then spent 30 years working both as a violinmaker and a restorer of some of the world’s most sought after instruments. I won awards from international violinmaking competitions and my instruments were bought by decreeing classical players. In addition,
While having the highest respect for Classical violin forms I have spent my career nudging the boundaries of successful classic instruments in order to better understand how they work. This has given me working knowledge and an intuitive sense about material selection, instrument design
Brandon and The Violinshop in Nashville, the worlds leading Five String dealers are an amazing resource
The Violinshop in Nashville offers a widest range of Fives anywhere. They have many years of experience working with leading artists in the Fiddle and Jazz world. Their staff include top level, experienced fiddlers. They know which fiddles work well in a jam setting or will mic-up well on stage. They understand nuances of set-up that fiddlers rely on when playing old standards or pushing musical boundaries.
As a Classical maker this knowledge is was to me.
I knew we were getting somewhere when I took my #8 Five to Brandon and he said: “I don’t think this one’s going up for sale, I’ve got to have it for my collection! “
The five string fiddle is a bundle of compromises. For the biggest sounding C-string we would like a cello body but that would create major playability problems for most fiddlers. A look at my blog posts will tell you that I’ve spent my career working with instruments on the margins, pushing standard dimensions and trying alternate materials in order to better understand, and produce the best “regular” instruments. I jumped at the chance to apply what I have learned to trying to solve the problems inherent in the five string fiddle.
Drawing on my experience working with other marginal instruments, and ,most importantly, consulting the wealth h of knowledge at the Violinshop, Nashville, I believe that we have come up with the best solutions to the many compromises that go into making any great instrument. After a career spent testing the limits of what can be done acoustically and functionally with violins, violas, cellos (one) bass, guitars and mandolins.