Books › Old violins and violin lore, 1900 › scan 211
Scan 211
Old violins and violin lore, 1900
12 lines. Read by computer on 28 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1OLD VIOLINS
3they used ivory; you may perhaps have noticed that on some violins you have a difficulty in stopping fifths, or indeed any chords, in tune. This, unless you are a mere blunderer, comes from the state of your finger-board. You may not have noticed it, but you will observe that the strings, by constantly being squeezed by the fingers against the smoothly-arched surface of the ebony, have worn channels in the wood, but channels of unequal depths; the consequence is that the same pressure, forcing two strings down on unequally raised surfaces, fails to produce that relatively equal pressure necessary for producing your true fifth; the string also being sunk, it does not get the full benefit of the finger's pressure, as the shock of impact will be broken by the higher level of the finger-board on either side of the sunken string.
5In this way the tone quality as well as the intonation suffers from what so constantly eludes observation—a worn finger-board.
7Of course a new finger-board, or the restoration of an old one, is a very easy matter, and can in no way affect, except for the better, any violin.
9It may safely be said that no violin now in use has either its original finger-board or, for the matter of that, its original neck. Strings of very ill-assorted thickness are also responsible for imperfect fifths.
11The management of the pegs sometimes presents difficulties to the novice. Rosewood, ivory, and boxwood have been tried, but ebony seems to be the favourite, though many incline, as I do personally, to
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