Titian #4 strung-up.

I strung up this fiddle about 24 hours ago, and am not unhappy with the tone so far. I expect it to play in well. I chose a tune that covers the four strings in first position, which is about my range! It is a shortened version (to fit the Flickr 90-second limit) of "Coilsfield House" which I learned from the Pete Clark CD "Even Now, the Music of Niel Gow."

Recording is done using the video mode of my Pentax Optio WP digital camera.



Dominant G, D, A; Jargar e (forte).

This is the 4th fiddle I've made, and the first one that after I strung it up, I wasn't immediately unhappy with the sound. It's not perfect by any means. There's a bit of edge on the e-string. On the other hand, the notes sound clear to my ear, and I have hopes it will develop over the next few days.

And when I say I wasn't immediately unhappy with the sound, I mean that I cut a soundpost to fit the typical starting position (3 mm behind the bridge, 1 mm inside), cut the bridge to a standard shape, put the afterlength (between the bridge and tailpiece) at approximately 1/6th the string length (between nut and bridge), and played it. I have made no adjustments since. Still, it's not perfect, or maybe even optimized, but it seems ok to me right now. All my previous instruments I would string them up, play them, adjust the soundpost, afterlength, bridge, until I got it closer to what I wanted.

So, I was not unhappy with it. The next one will be better. :-)