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Hi everyone.
When I first started play I had the usual rosin the urine color cake you usually get with the cheap violins,OK. maybe I shouldn't have used the word urine...
And I noticed right off the bat that I had a problem as I wear glasses when playing and reading sheet music it took some time to figure out why my glasses would get fogged up and I'd have to wash them with dish soap and hot water to get what ever was on them cleaned off.
Once I figured out it was the rosin causing this I decided to look for another type the problem is I live in Indiana and never know from one year to the next what the weather is going to do we get bitter cold and we get humidity so I decided to stay with something light as my understanding at the time was dark rosin is more tacky.
So I found Magic rosin before the name sake was bought by Connolly music I was not aware at the time as to how strong this stuff was latter on I purchased a new fiddlerman carbon fiber bow needless to say I went about rosining it up like I would any new bow and of course I was doing so with this magic rosin.
This stuff sticks around forever and has done so on both ends of the bow to the point when bowing near the tip or the frog its sounds like scratching a record player needle across an entire album in short order.
Long story short I need to change rosin and find something that works well in all 4 seasons along with not putting bow dandruff all over my glasses.
I've looked into the Kaplan on fiddlershop but once again there's a dark and a light formula but most reviews say there's a lot less dust.
Any thoughts?
Honorary tenured advisor
Regulars
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Hi Tim,
I switched to Holstein Premium. It is a hybrid light/dark rosin, and I find the dust level to be low.
Jim
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The Holstein Premium Rosin came with my Fiddlerman Master violin outfit, and I like it. I clean my strings with a cloth after every session. I seldom see any rosin on the fingerboard. OTOH, I don't play in any long sessions, I'm pretty light on the bow, and I don't apply a lot of rosin.
Another great thing about this rosin is the shape. If you turn it, it doesn't develop a groove. So, if you don't break it, you get to use all of it, rather than just a strip in the middle.
Regulars
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It sounds like the OP may be using far too much rosin.
As for four-season rosin, I'm sure Holstein is perfect.
Just ditch the straw-coloured stuff and shell out 15 bucks or thereabouts on any dark amber rosin and you'll be fine.
Andrew
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Regulars
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I use Andrea Violin solo rosin. It's a very hard dark rosin that might take me 100 years to use. It isn't "sticky" yet has a nice gripping characteristic. I don't often need to rosin using it.
I've had the cake for a year and there is hardly any sign of wear on it. This is with me playing every day and rosining my bow at least once a week. A few of my bows need a re hair which I often in times past blamed on the rosin. Rosin is the easy fix so I always tried to make a bow with bad hair play with new rosin. Just doesn't work.....so new hair it is.
Regulars
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I use Jade rosin. It's very smooth playing for a dark rosin, so I'd consider it an excellent four-season rosin. It's also virtually dust-free. That said, almost any rosin sold on its own is going to be much better than the cheap wood-block rosins included in most student violin outfits.
One other thought: most beginners, and even many experienced players, over-rosin their bows. Unless you're using new bow hair that hasn't ever been rosined before, you should only need three or four bow strokes across the rosin cake at a time. If you use much more than that, you're only generating extra dust and causing extra rosin build-up on the strings.
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Good news its not the end of the world I came across this video if it actually loaded that was full of good information on cleaning so I just have to watch it with that Magic brand rosin from now on.https://www.invidio.us/watch?v.....iZ0skqymFE
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All the above tips sound good to me. Use a bit less rosin and see if that helps but make sure that the bow has enough so it pulls the strings instead of gliding over.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
Regulars
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As we beginners work frantically with our left hands, our right hands forget to apply bow pressure to the strings, and perhaps this can be mistaken for insufficient rosin if you don't have a teacher to correct you.
Fiddlers hold the bow away from the frog. It is possible that they are applying less pressure to the strings that way and that's why they use so much rosin. (apart from the fact that it's fiddler chic never to clean your fiddle, lol! 
). We seem to lack a fiddle smiley!
Andrew
Verified human - the ignominy!
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