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(6 votes) 
Regulars
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That was totally unexpected. Just weighed the bow and it is 58 grams without hair. I have two other examples of a Heddon bow and they are much lighter.
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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Then we are talking about a very normal weight. 
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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I was looking at the Knoll bow company’s website (a German business) and saw that their method of constructing a hybrid bow is to epoxy a carbon fiber sleeve over a wood stick. I have a very nice antique bow with a stick repair using coiled wire. I was going to remove the wire and tightly wrap non dyed silk thread over the damaged area. I now think I will add a sleeve of carbon fiber over the whole stick (less the frog area so I will not have to worry about clearances).
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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Irv said
I was looking at the Knoll bow company’s website (a German business) and saw that their method of constructing a hybrid bow is to epoxy a carbon fiber sleeve over a wood stick. I have a very nice antique bow with a stick repair using coiled wire. I was going to remove the wire and tightly wrap non dyed silk thread over the damaged area. I now think I will add a sleeve of carbon fiber over the whole stick (less the frog area so I will not have to worry about clearances).
Interesting. That's the opposite of most hybrid bows, which have a thin wood layer over a carbon fiber core. It seems to me the wood should be on the outside, because a carbon fiber sleeve could inhibit the wood from vibrating and defeat the purpose of a hybrid bow. I'd be interested in knowing what advantages Knoll claims over carbon fiber bows.
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They call that bow the Duett. The underlying wood is pernambuco.
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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Like comparing cappuccino espresso to Espresso Cappuccino.
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
Regulars
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I have simple tastes in coffee, and do not enjoy the effects of caffeine. So I am assuming that the above post translates to no substantial difference in performance. Correct.
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
Honorary advisor
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I lived in and out of truckstops enough years to be addicted to the black gold. Takes a really strong cup for me to notice the effects. Puerto Rican espresso didn't just open my eyes, it had me seeing through walls.
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Just received an honest pernambuco violin bow today and I have a question. As I practice with it, the bow hair stays in firm contact with the string, but I can see the bow stick vibrating all over the place in front of me. It is like I am seeing a car’s suspension on a dirt road. Is this normal for this type of wood? I have not experienced anything like that before. The tone is better than normal, but not life changing (I am using an electric violin through cheap head phones).
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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Irv said
Just received an honest pernambuco violin bow today and I have a question. As I practice with it, the bow hair stays in firm contact with the string, but I can see the bow stick vibrating all over the place in front of me. It is like I am seeing a car’s suspension on a dirt road. Is this normal for this type of wood? I have not experienced anything like that before. The tone is better than normal, but not life changing (I am using an electric violin through cheap head phones).
Any good bow, whether wood or carbon fiber, should be capable of doing that, and should react that way when bowing quickly -- look up the bowing technique called sautillé.
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"... sautillé" ... hmmm, please correct me if I'm wrong but "sautillé" evokes the idea of "jumping" to me and Irv says that his bow hair is staying in firm contact with the strings. But I do get your point... not every bow is equally capable of a decent sautillé (and not every player, including me, either!)
With a lot of luck, Irv, you may have landed an exceptionally responsive bow! Keep experimenting (heavy vs: light pressure, fast vs: slow strokes...) and please send more details (things like weight and balance point, maybe even a photo side by side with your FM CF bow so we can see the camber). Also, something tells me you'll get a better read on the bow's performance on an accoustic violin.
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I just looked at a YouTube video on sautille bowing and when the girl really got going I could see the bow doing a similar movement as mine, but in her case the position of the bow was centered on the string (I get the effect through out the length of the hair). Also, in her case the hair was lifting off the string and mine remains on the string (but I experienced it when doing a lesson on slow slurred crossing strings).
I will try a faster oscillating stroke later today and see if I can get the hair off the string. I think that it should be easy.
A funny story about the bow. Evidently, the music store attempted to go up scale twenty years ago and purchased ten of these bows. The business plan did not work out and put the four they had left on eBay as Brazil Wood bows. From the model number, I knew the wood should be pernambuco. The auction ad had a telephone number, so I called. Owner said he listed the wood as Brazil Wood because he could not call it pernambuco and sell it internationally. Asking price was 1/2 of the 20 year old retail. I requested, and received, 15% off that. Bow came in a yellowed heat seal plastic bag. Perhaps I should buy another.
bocaholly. The bow weighs 60 grams and has a silver wrap (I found that this manufacturer puts silver wrap on even their student bows because grandpa did it that way).
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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In a properly executed sautillé, the stick bounces but the hair should not leave the string (or at least the bounce should be minimal). The articulation comes purely from the bow stick. Whether the bow hair leaves the string is the difference between spiccato and sautillé.
If your bow stick is bouncing throughout its length and when bowing slowly, that's a matter of technique. The most common cause is that your hand is too stiff. A good bow compensates somewhat for that stiffness, which may be what you are seeing.
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Well. I did the experiment with the assumption that I needed the stroke to be fast enough for the hair to leave the string.
1/3 of bow toward head—bow visually vibrating but hair on string.
middle 1/3 of bow—hair off string easily.
1/3 of bow toward frog—hair off stick so easily that I had to press down with first finger to maintain any control.
I am not feeling vibration in my right hand, so the oscillation must be occurring in the area of the stick before the wrap. Strange. This is indeed a new experience for me.
I also have a Fiddlerman Yellow Sandalwood bow, which was said to be very responsive. I could get the hair off the bow when playing at the exact middle of stick. But I see no apparent vibrational modes while doing so.
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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AndrewH said
Irv said
I was looking at the Knoll bow company’s website (a German business) and saw that their method of constructing a hybrid bow is to epoxy a carbon fiber sleeve over a wood stick. I have a very nice antique bow with a stick repair using coiled wire. I was going to remove the wire and tightly wrap non dyed silk thread over the damaged area. I now think I will add a sleeve of carbon fiber over the whole stick (less the frog area so I will not have to worry about clearances).Interesting. That's the opposite of most hybrid bows, which have a thin wood layer over a carbon fiber core. It seems to me the wood should be on the outside, because a carbon fiber sleeve could inhibit the wood from vibrating and defeat the purpose of a hybrid bow. I'd be interested in knowing what advantages Knoll claims over carbon fiber bows.
I'm only responding to this because I haven't read all of these threads thoroughly and am not sure if I know what people are saying. Laminates can't be discussed as though they were two independent layers, if that's what you are doing, although I'm not sure of the best way of discussing them.
When you paint in oils, you work from less flexible underneath to more flexible on top, and you roll them up with the more flexible on the outside. Ditto if you are just painting doors and windows. This prevents cracking. I guess in a bow you also have the more flexible (the wood?) on the outside for the same reason. It has a greater distance to move, as it's on the circumference of a circle, so it needs to stretch more, although firmly bonded to the carbon underneath.
My guess is modern wood is younger, softer, poorer quality than older wood, and the carbon core simulates the stiffness of older wood. I notice that the Arcus M4 is hollow carbon, which may be a way of achieving the right flexibility without any wood. So carbon with a porous core like bone may be a good way to go.
All guesswork, though.
Andrew
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Hi AndrewH. As previously posted, I saw the bow vibrate in front of me while slowly bowing but the hair remained on the string (and gave forth a very even sound in pitch and volume). In order to get the hair off the bow, I had to increase bowing to about 1 cycle (toward and away stroke) per second. The firmness of my right hand remained constant between a cf bow, Yellow sandlewood bow, and the new pernambuco bow.
It now appears that I happened upon a very responsive stick. I had no idea that this was a good thing (thank you, everyone).
For my next experiment, I am going to place my hand at increasingly forward positions until I can start feeling the stick vibrate. At the thumb pad position, I can see it vibrate, but I get no tactile sensation.
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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You don't need to move the bow quickly up and down to play spiccato; if you just hold the bow above the string and let it fall, it will bounce, to different heights depending on what part of the bow lands on the string. You have already observed this by lifting the bow while playing. One way to think of spiccato is something like bowing a little above the string, and letting the bow bounce.
I just looked more closely at my own bow, and even on long, slow bows I notice the stick vibrates slightly. I can't determine the frequency because the amplitude is barely perceptible at that bow speed. At higher speeds, of course, it is much more clear that the bow is acting as a shock absorber.
I think this explains why a student is eventually held back by a poorly-made bow. Bowing is all about controlling the elasticity and using it to your advantage. Early on, a student most likely focuses on avoiding unwanted bounces, and for that purpose a less responsive bow is easier to control, much like a bicycle with training wheels. But once the student gets past the basics of bowing, and the goal is no longer simply to avoid unwanted movement, the training wheels need to come off!
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Well, AndrewH and others, I must have immediately sensed that the bowish noodles provided with my cheap oriental violins were unsatisfactory for a beginner since I quickly got a Fiddlerman cf bow. I would have left it at that except for my interest in testing various materials. I became interested in the properties of black bow hair, so I purchased another cf bow so equipped and liked it.
My next interest was the development of a split bamboo violin bow. I felt that I needed further experimentation with existing bow materials. So I purchased a Fiddlerman Yellow Sandalwood bow (tested), a number of Heddon steel bows (awaiting rehair) and the rather expensive (to me at $460 retail) pernambuco bow (tested).
I also purchased several antique damaged pernambuco bows very inexpensively that need various repairs. I am considering providing a cf sleeve to one of these bows to approximate a pernambuco/cf hybrid.
Of course, once my jigs and fixtures are ready for my split bamboo bows, I can also use them to create bows of various woods such as oak and hickory. Some allowance will likely be necessary for taper due to differing material characteristics.
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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Well, Irv was stupid. As experiment II, I advanced my grip further and further up the stick. I never felt any vibration, but I could see it. Simple physics. All of the vibration in the stick is in the plane toward and away from the hair. I am gripping the stick on the sides, which are motionless. As a further test, I positioned the stick so the hair made an acute angle to the string. The vibration was immediately apparent in my right hand.
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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I tried my new bow with my acoustic violin. Tone was fantastic. But there was a problem. Once in a while, as the bow changed directions, where was a strange moment of sound. It appears that the bow’s energy of oscillation caused a kind of inertia that had to be cancelled out before started again in the bowing of the opposite direction. This may be due to energy added to the bow by the vibrating top plate of the acoustic violin, since I did not experience it with the electric violin.
I am sure that, with practice, I can learn to correct for this effect. Any suggestions?
Success is the progressive realisation of a worthy ideal. —Earl Nightingale.
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