pchoppin said
I am using Hidersine.  It is a low price rosin.  For my playing, which is about an hour a day, I am rosining my bow about once a week.

  

Ditto.

...I do see what you mean about price... the amount of rosin used makes the price somewhat irrelevant.

My teacher claims to have used two cakes of Hidersine rosin in 30 years of professional viola playing. If that's true, you can easily afford Leatherwood at that rate, and indeed she has come back from a workshop in Cremona enthusing about more expensive rosin - I think they gave her a block of Leatherwood free.

But every time I think I understand Hidersine's numbering system, I discover I'm wrong.

They do 1V, 3V, 6V for violin and viola and 1C, 3C and 6C for cello. 3 is amber and 6 is dark, and I assumed 1 was light, but now a closer inspection of their website indicates that 6 is for steel strings (!?), 3 is a smaller amber cake, and 1 is a bigger amber cake!? If they say so. I've got some 3V and some 6V, and I've just ordered some 1V to confirm it.

AndrewH said
I use only two or three bow strokes across the rosin cake at a time. With Hill Dark, I apply rosin every 2-3 hours of playing time; with Jade, I apply rosin every 1-2 hours of playing time.  

Little and often, lol. I have read many people complain that Jade doesn't last long enough.

Forgive me if I repeat myself - I can't remember what I said elsewhere, but it might be a good place to summarise, since this is a current thread and anything I've misconstrued so far can be corrected.

I've been using dark rosin because Pierre recommended it.

I've got Hidersine 6V, Hill dark, Royal Oak. I had some Kaplan, but it got smashed.

I tried Jade, didn't particularly like it. Ditched it. Wish I hadn't - I'm inexperienced and stupid. When I'm experienced, Jade might strike me very differently, as it does Andrew. It's cheap enough to buy some more, but that would make me feel doubly stupid, especially if I didn't like it the second time around either, lol!

My teacher has been using Hidersine for 30 years but has now decided that more expensive rosins are worth it. I don't know if she uses amber or dark. Amber is more likely to last that long: she used 2 cakes in 30 years (she can be a bit ditzy, so that may be an exaggeration, but only a mild one). 

Hidersine's small print says their dark was mainly developed for steel strings.

So we could all try some expensive amber rosin. We can all afford Leatherwood at my teacher's rate of use.

(But it's a matter of taste too - Pierre likes dark rosin because it lets him dig into the strings. I add this because I realised this post seems to call his judgement into question).

Otoh, my teacher's reappraisal came in Cremona, where the climate was different from London's, so it may still be inconclusive! Pierre may have developed his taste for dark rosin during a Swedish winter (lol!), otoh, he's been in Florida for a decade or more now. Otoh, he may have turbo-charged air-con!

AndrewH said
Strangely, I had never heard of Hidersine before you joined this forum and mentioned it, even though I've played in orchestras almost continuously since 2001. I don't think I've ever seen Hidersine rosins in any shop I've been to.  

Although they claim to be world famous, I wouldn't be surprised if they are unknown outside the UK. I received some 1V today. It is indeed amber and a little bit bigger than a 3V cake, which is the same colour (whereas 6V is dark and the same size as 1V). I can't imagine what the point might be.

If @Mouse wants something slightly less sticky, she could try 1V instead of 1C

(I'm guessing that humidity doesn't matter - temperature is what matters. If rosin were hygroscopic, I'd be surprised. Otoh, horsehair may be hygroscopic, but then you'd need a stickier rosin in a hot humid summer for it to stick to the damper horsehair?)

pchoppin said
So I visited my Luthier...

Here's what he said...

My Hidersine rosin was the wrong rosin... plus I had too much on my bow.

He cleaned my bow hair... the rosin he recommends is Hill Dark Rosin.  We rosined my bow...  Now the strings are no longer making the hissing sound as before.

He also adjusted my bridge and sound post to line up properly.. they were slightly off.

My violin sounds so awesome...

  

Very interesting and curious. I just bought a new bow (Delille Hybrid, £240). My old bow is a Col Legno Standard (£140). I like the Col Legno a lot more.

The Delille's sound is a lot less focused and more hissy. My first instinct was that the rosining had to be identical on both before I could judge them fairly. Then I wondered if new bows need to settle. Then I wondered, would that mean a rehair would need to settle too?

In what way was your Hidersine rosin wrong, because it was Hidersine, because it was amber?

I've been using Hidersine dark, Hidersine amber, Hill dark and Royal Oak Classic (Amber. I love it - I'm going to try Larsen's other products some time).

So maybe it's time to clean both bows and abandon Hidersine for a while; but my teacher has a £6,000 pernambuco bow and a Col Legno as backup, so maybe Col Legnos are just excellent bows for the money!