Books › The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903 › scan 30
Scan 30
The Repairing & Restoration of Violins, 1903
4 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 16. See the scan on archive.org.
1the condemned case as being an unfit receptacle for your cherished Cremona. Further, if the fit is at all tight, do not use pressure but get another case, your violin would be a very bad one indeed for your sympathies to fall in with a horrible suggestion once made by the maker of a too closely fitting case for his friend's instrument, that he should be allowed to take a shaving or two off the violin, it would then go in nicely. As some excuse for this maker he was not an amateur in this line, but a professional undertaker.
3We may now shift our ground and notice another source of the complaint—rattles, jars, chatters, or grunts, which ever may appear the most appropriate title for another variety of annoyance to the performer. Having found out with our felt-headed hammer, or if that is not easily obtainable, a slender stick may be covered at the end with almost any soft material enclosed within a piece of chamois or soft leather, and tied so as to form a knob like a small drumstick. Having tested the violin with it in the manner before referred to, and there being no bad reports from the body of the instrument, the hurt, seat of injury, or lesion, may be in the neck, fingerboard, or even the scroll, any part being liable to give out its undesirable note, or interfere with the proper emission of musical tone from the strings. There is no portion of the violin that will not under certain provocations join too willingly in the production of unwelcome sounds if the exciting conditions are present—those of checked vibration, or vibration that should be checked. An unsuspected cause may be discovered by the tapping test to be lurking unseen, and often unfelt, till one note being struck in unison or sympathy with the affected spot, may cause it to speak in a decided manner. This is at the part where the fingerboard parts from the neck over the instrument towards the bridge—the rather thin glue, as it should be—may, through damp or other causes, have lost its hold for but a short distance, and not be evident while the fingers are pressing the strings over the part; but when notes are struck nearer towards the nut, the pressure is
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