A couple of days ago, I finally had a couple of hours free (both from work and kids!) to quickly do some much needed string maintenance on some of my instruments! When I was younger and I had more time, I would be changing the strings on my instruments on a much more regular schedule. As the strings get older (especially gut strings), they lose flexibility and consistency which can really affect the sound and feedback from the instruments. Now, I tend to just change them when they are noticeably deteriorating or affecting my feel of the instrument. Ah... the wisdom and tiredness of age replacing the enthusiasm and idealism of the younger self!

The Strings

In my particular specialisation of "Classical" Music, we use mostly gut strings made from sheep or cow, which are twisted in a fashion similar to the creation of ropes (just at a finer level!). This is in contrast to many of the "Classical" instruments that are in use today, which use strings made of metal (usually steel), which make a completely different sound to the older style of strings. Interestingly enough, although the modern metal strings are the standard of the concert halls these days, it was a relatively recent phenomenon, only taking popularity after the Second World War.

I tend to use a variety of different guages (string diametres) and brands across the different instruments. Even more than metal strings, the instruments are quite differently responsive to different widths and types (ways of twisting/manufacture) of the strings. It can take years to find a balance of strings (there are only four!) that works with the the player, instrument and bow. Often, changing one string in the balance affects the others quite heavily as well... Even after finding an acceptable balance, changes in humidity and temperature can throw everything off again! No wonder metal was eventually settled upon as an acceptable trade off for consistency over sound quality.

Main Baroque Violin

This is the Baroque violin that was in the featured photo, looking like a toothless tiger with a string missing. As you can see in the photo directly above, the strings had started fraying. This will happen over time, after all, you are running your hands and fingers up and down the string and so eventually friction will take it's toll!

Anyway, it is something that needs to be changed... it makes the tone of the string ring a little bit false. Not a disaster for the audience, but immensely annoying for the violinist! However, left unchecked, it will eventually snap. Again, not that big a disaster unless you are on stage at the time!

Viola d'amore

Well, I'm not using this instrument in the next few months and so I've let this one lapse a little bit. On the top, there was a string that had snapped after I had lent it out to someone who needed it tuned up to A=440Hz (normally the instrument is tuned to A=415Hz). The extra tension was just too much for the strings that I had on the instrument (higher pitches require slightly thinner strings to reduce the amount of tension required to get to the pitch required), and so I had lost several of the top strings during that time. Easy enough to replace, but it had depleted my supply of those strings....

Trickier to diagnose and fix was a buzz in the resonant strings under the fingerboard (there are 7 playing strings and 7 resonant sympathetic strings). Unfortunately, it ended up being a problem that needed to be shunted to a different day. In the end I couldn't find it, and ended up just cutting two of the resonant strings to replace at a later date.

2nd Baroque Violin

Well.. this is embarassing! I don't use this violin so much, and so I just kept putting off fixing the strings on it! However, with two strings out of four missing, it is in grave danger of losing the stability bridge and soundpost. The bridge is the piece of wood that holds the strings up, and transmits the vibrations of the strings to the body of the instrument (it is held there by the tension of the strings), and the soundpost is inside the violin and joins the front and the back of the violin to make the whole body a resonant body for the strings (again, held in place partly by the string tension).

So, it was getting to be a bit of a "do this now, or it gets really worse" sort of situation.... Needless to say, I used old strings for this one. Unless I have a need for this violin in the near future, there is no point wasting good new strings on it just to hold the tension of the instrument!