Fluted Viola in Poplar
Back: Poplar
Top: Italian Spruce,
Neck: Baltic Maple
Antiqued oil varnish
Body length: 363 (15 3/4″)
Bouts: 188, 135, 234
Ribs including plates:44 at top block, 46 at lower block
String length: 363
Stop: 213
This is a version of my “Del Gesu” Model viola. There are no extant Del Gesu violas, perhaps he never made any, but I imagined what one might have looked like if he had.
The tooling on the surface is a little more extreme than even DG felt comfortable leaving. I feel that it is more in line with post nineteenth century sculptural aesthetics.
The sound of the viola is surprisingly normal, as I have found with my other Off-Beat instruments. It is possible that the surface fluting may actually help the tone: the plate graduations seen on classic master instruments are notoriously irregular compared to the majority of modern day copies. Unexciting graduations = unexciting tone?