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cf violin
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pky
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October 14, 2012 - 12:01 am
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not bad!

 (edited, posted wrong link)

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Kevin M.
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October 14, 2012 - 12:02 pm
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Thank you PKY I have been wondering about a CF Violin ever since I saw a CF Cello.  I kind of like the sound although it sounds very different I still like it.

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Mad_Wed
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I think those are incredibly strong... and incredibly expensive... Not bad at all, agreed, but don't want one of them for now =) Thanks for sharing, PKY!

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MikeV
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I wonder if the cf violins would hold up to someone sitting on it if left on a chair in an orchestra? confused now that would be strong!blink

"The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work." - Mark Twain

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AdverseD

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At the price they range at I would rather get a fine wooden instrument. I do like the sound though, just as Kevin stated it is "different" yet pleasant. 

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cdennyb
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Wow, forget the expensive composite violin... she can PLAY!
 
awesome piece...thumbs-up

On a mechanical observation note (no pun intended! LOL) I bet the use of a tighter weave of CF would change the sound... It'd be a great experiment... anyone have some extra cash laying around we could use to make about a dozen different violins with?

"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein

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DanielB
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I think that things like carbon fibre have great possibilities for making instruments where they may not only sound good, but actually be repeatable and reliable in manufacture. 

I mean, using wood for the top of a bowed stringed instrument instead of stretched hide was a new concept once, too. 

Personally, I like wood.  It is pretty, it has that certain sound to it, and that particular inimitable tactile quality.  But I don't rule out the possibility that carbon fibre or some other new material could sound and play just wonderfully.  

Sure they are new right now and expensive.  But in another 10-20 yrs, they may be selling at 50$ and sound even nicer.  They could potentially be a more stable, durable, and consistently nice instrument when bought brand-new. 

"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman

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RosinedUp

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DanielB said 
Sure they are new right now and expensive.  But in another 10-20 yrs, they may be selling at 50$ and sound even nicer.  They could potentially be a more stable, durable, and consistently nice instrument when bought brand-new. 

I don't think there is much chance that it will take 20 years for them to get cheap, unless there is something like patents getting in the way.  Just look at this site by a guy who makes them in his spare time, as something like a cottage industry.  He made his first attempt just three months after knowing nothing about either violins or carbon fiber:  http://rochonviolins.com/  For one thing, it doesn't seem that it requires a lot of expensive equipment to get started.

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cdennyb
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Pretty amazing stuff. Interesting he chose the coarse wide weave...

dunno

"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein

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DanielB
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I've looked into cf a bit.  It isn't really any harder to do than fiberglass.  Similar resins involved, just a different sort of fabric.

But I think that like any different material than the woods violins are traditionally made from, it would take a lot of experimentation to get the best sound from it.  The current traditional violin is the result of many years of evolution to get the body shape and curves optimal.  A new material would have different characteristics, and so just copying the math/curves/dimensions wouldn't be the best an instrument made from a new material could sound. 

"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman

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Kevin M.
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October 17, 2012 - 10:41 am
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Now how about CF bows? I have been looking at braided CF bows but know nothing about them.  Does the braided carbon fiber make them stiffer, lighter, more stable?

 

One thing I know about CF is that it is always curring like fiberglass. So would a CF violin decrease in value with age or reach a point years later when it's at it's best and from that point decline?

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Fiddlestix
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How long did it say that it take's to cure, and should we live that long ?

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PaTooDoNaLD
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October 17, 2012 - 11:54 am
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The channel that this video comes have such amazing violins! and a great player to! 
That bad parts is to wait new videos ha ha
you guys should have a look!

"The first and best victory is to conquer self."
Plato.

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RosinedUp

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If CF cures faster than wood, we could expect a faster evolution of CF designs.

Also I am thinking that uniformity and reproducibility of the material might allow computer simulation of designs.  Then you could set a thousand cheap computers to the job of tweaking and testing a billion slightly different designs.

Sad to think that wooden violins might go the way of the vacuum tube and the 35 mm camera though.

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cdennyb
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as long as someone owns a wood violin worth millions... they will always be around.

fainting-1344

"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein

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DanielB
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Epoxy resins do have some problems with ageing.  But wood is also usually considered to have similar problems.  A 300 yr old piece of spruce isn't something you would likely want to use as a construction material in your home, for example. 

Epoxy does continue to change over time.  To get an idea what the long term problems can be, look at amber.  Amber is a similar resin, but with water removed as long chains formed over hundreds or thousands of years.  Epoxy is accelerated chemically to make it harden faster.  Not even a synthetic form of amber, it is basically amber where the hardening process was just sped up. 

The epoxy resin used in CF is probably going to be fairly stable over a reasonable number of years, but those instruments may not end up being something of great value over the course of centuries.  Mostly epoxy (whether used with CF or glass fibre) will have problems sooner if it is exposed to extremes or temperature or humidity, ultraviolet, or harsh chemicals.  So will wood, though.

Under the conditions most reasonable musicians will keep an instrument, hardened resins and anything (CF fabric, in this case) in their matrix will last quite a long time.  

Consider an antique violin finished with spirit varnish.  That varnish is largely resin that was accelerated by heat and then subjected to a solvent, applied and dried.  It is at least a close cousin in many cases to epoxy.  The finish on some of those violins is still nice after a very long period of time.

Fibreglass has a reputation for not ageing well, but the fibre itself is more brittle than CF, and where it usually doesn't age well is in things like boats and cars, where they are exposed to weather, sunlight, and lord knows what sort of cleansers and etc.  On the other hand, if kept away from such things (as music instruments usually are) I have seen fibreglass circuit boards (for example) from the 1970s that show no sign of ageing at all. 

40 yrs or more.  Well, that could be a very reasonable lifespan for a student grade instrument.  If it is reasonably stable and durable within that time span (or perhaps longer), it could be great.  For all I know, a CF violin might improve or degrade with age.  Nobody will know for sure until the first ones pass their first couple of centuries, eh?  LOL

But I feel the potential is there for some reasonably good sounding and playing instruments that could be of very consistent quality and more than durable enough for at least student/beginner needs.  I think in the end, most people will still eventually want the pretty instrument made of the traditional woods.  But low-cost reliable instruments with a reasonably long lifespan could definitely fill some of the needs of the music community.  They might not last for centuries, but they could likely last for a few generations of players.

On a side note, I really like how the fingerboard looks on the CF violin in the video.  LOL

"This young wine may have a lot of tannins now, but in 5 or 10 years it is going to be spectacular, despite the fact that right now it tastes like crude oil. You know this is how it is supposed to taste at this stage of development." ~ Itzhak Perlman

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cpiasminc

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Well, one of the convenient things about CF or fiberglass, or pretty much any composite material is that we don't necessarily have to deal with the hunt-and-peck you'd have to face with wood.  Getting the very best tonewood is a process that involves aging, drying, and an exhaustive search, and accounting for any minor shortcoming by adjusting how you cut and shave.  That's pretty much what made the old masters the old masters.  With composite materials, you can basically tune the material properties for density, flexibility, young's modulus, vibrational modes, etc. to get exactly what you need.  Getting the best composite "tonewood" is simply a material of making it with just the right mold/weave/hardener ratio/etc.  This happened in the case of the mridangam where a jackwood body would be considered traditional, but because of laws controlling the use of jackwood, they had to shift to other woods as well as synthetics, and now the general consensus is that it's entirely possible to duplicate jackwood's acoustic properties pretty much exactly with a well-tuned fiberglass.

Also, regarding that point you made about the shape having to be different to suit the material...  There is, to my knowledge, at least the one maker of CF violins who applies that --

http://www.luisandclark.com/

Mainly, they address the fact that because of the strength of carbon fiber and the epoxy, you have no need of the cornices (which are mainly there on a wooden violin for structural reasons).  By getting rid of them and just using the interior bulging volume as the true shape, they apparently get less destructive interference from extra bounces inside the chamber.  Though in practice, I think this is just a start.  I think with different material parameters, you might be able to play with the shape even further.

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cdennyb
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I wouldnt be surprised if in the future perhaps 10 yrs down the road, if a violin doesn't even look like a conventional violin anymore. Using composites and computer software it would be possible to input what kind of sound you want and have an aucoustic computer program design the perfect shape given the type string and length and other parameters that would affect sound. Then a CAD/CAM machine would create the perfect mold and then the CF would be layed up as necessary, thinning in some places and thicker in others as necessary and dictated by the program.

Just look what an electric looks like now... perhaps that's an indication of the direction of modern musical instruments like the violin.dunno

"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein

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RosinedUp

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cdennyb said
I wouldnt be surprised if in the future perhaps 10 yrs down the road, if a violin doesn't even look like a conventional violin anymore.

I hope you aren't running away with my speculation above about simulation.  I don't know whether or how practical it is to make a software model of a violin.  But if it is practical to simulate, I think you are right about the shape being different in the future.

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cdennyb
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RosinedUp said

I hope you aren't running away with my speculation above about simulation...

If people didn't do that, many of our modern inventions would never have been developed.

Running with scissors in your hand won't kill you... It just makes for an interesting future...cheers

"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein

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