Post by George on Mar 31, 2011 15:57:59 GMT
Since I thought this list, which I put together for magadavixt, might be useful to others, I've moved it to a new thread.
Deciding whether a bridge suits your erhu:
- Does it physically fit and tonally suit your erhu? (Try well-made bridges in as many different woods and shapes as possible. As an unreliable rule, bridges made of white wood sound classically erhu/nasal, maple sounds more violin-like, ebony mellows the tone of bright instruments, violet or ebony sandalwood sharpens mellow instruments, and petrified wood sounds very clear rather than piercing. The ideal bridge for your erhu may change over time as the snakeskin and/or wood age.)
- Are the nicks for the strings separated by the right distance for the kind of bow you like, such that it's simultaneously easy to play on only one string, to switch between strings with minimal movement, and perhaps to play double-stops?
Deciding whether a bridge is due for retirement:
- Has it visibly taken a beating?
- Are the nicks for the strings still unworn?
Checking a bridge for faults:
- Is it smoothly carved and unsplintered?
- Is it entirely symmetrical when viewed from all four sides and from above and below? (Perfect symmetry is probably not the acoustic ideal, but asymmetry is more likely to be due to carelessness than craft.)
- Is the base of even thickness all the way round the circumference?
- Are the nicks for the strings cleanly cut?
Deciding whether a bow suits you:
- Do you like its balance and weight?
- Do you like its length?
- Do you like its response to pressure on the ferrule?
- Do you like the ferrule's degree of flexibility? (Shanghai-style bows use hard plastic, others vary.)
- Do you like the bamboo's springiness or stiffness?
- Do you like the hair's flatness or bundling?
- Do you like the tone it gives you? (This depends on the quality, quantity and looseness of the hair as well as the use you make of the properties listed above. Your rosin is also a major factor, though the tonal differences between high-end violin rosins are generally subtle compared to the difference between any of them and any cheap Chinese rosin. I've not tried Song erhu rosin.)
- Do you care whether the ferrule can be detached from the frog, so that the latter doesn't have to be unscrewed when removing the bow from the erhu? (Beijing-style bows in theory allow this, but it's sometimes a bit tight.)
Deciding whether a bow is due for retirement:
- Have you not had to snip out too many broken hairs? (The more hairs you lose, the thinner the tone.)
- Does the hair still accept rosin at the same rate, and as evenly, as it did when only a few months old?
- Does the hair still grip the string as well as it did?
- Does the bow still give the same tone it once did?
- Is its bamboo still as springy as you'd like it to be? (If so, you could consider just getting the bow rehaired.)
The bow hair itself changes only a little with use; most of the decline in its performance over time can be reversed by cleaning it with alcohol (see starvoid.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Erhu&thread=1458&page=1#12679).
Checking a bow for faults:
- Does the screw tighten and loosen the hair, and fully unscrew, smoothly?
- Are the ferrule and hair at a perfect right angle to a plane symmetrically bisecting the bow? (I hope that makes sense.)
- Are the hairs uncreased, in reasonably perfect parallel and reasonably equal in length?
- Do only a few of them have sections which, when rosined and checked under a bright light, ideally with a magnifying glass, are unusually shiny, or opaque and "frosted", or bumpy and uneven, or flat, grooved and unrosined, or sawtooth-edged? (Snip these out, along with any that are unusually long, as close as possible to the ferrule and head.)
As usual, please do correct me or add to this as you think necessary. I'll edit this post accordingly, and have already made some changes.
Deciding whether a bridge suits your erhu:
- Does it physically fit and tonally suit your erhu? (Try well-made bridges in as many different woods and shapes as possible. As an unreliable rule, bridges made of white wood sound classically erhu/nasal, maple sounds more violin-like, ebony mellows the tone of bright instruments, violet or ebony sandalwood sharpens mellow instruments, and petrified wood sounds very clear rather than piercing. The ideal bridge for your erhu may change over time as the snakeskin and/or wood age.)
- Are the nicks for the strings separated by the right distance for the kind of bow you like, such that it's simultaneously easy to play on only one string, to switch between strings with minimal movement, and perhaps to play double-stops?
Deciding whether a bridge is due for retirement:
- Has it visibly taken a beating?
- Are the nicks for the strings still unworn?
Checking a bridge for faults:
- Is it smoothly carved and unsplintered?
- Is it entirely symmetrical when viewed from all four sides and from above and below? (Perfect symmetry is probably not the acoustic ideal, but asymmetry is more likely to be due to carelessness than craft.)
- Is the base of even thickness all the way round the circumference?
- Are the nicks for the strings cleanly cut?
Deciding whether a bow suits you:
- Do you like its balance and weight?
- Do you like its length?
- Do you like its response to pressure on the ferrule?
- Do you like the ferrule's degree of flexibility? (Shanghai-style bows use hard plastic, others vary.)
- Do you like the bamboo's springiness or stiffness?
- Do you like the hair's flatness or bundling?
- Do you like the tone it gives you? (This depends on the quality, quantity and looseness of the hair as well as the use you make of the properties listed above. Your rosin is also a major factor, though the tonal differences between high-end violin rosins are generally subtle compared to the difference between any of them and any cheap Chinese rosin. I've not tried Song erhu rosin.)
- Do you care whether the ferrule can be detached from the frog, so that the latter doesn't have to be unscrewed when removing the bow from the erhu? (Beijing-style bows in theory allow this, but it's sometimes a bit tight.)
Deciding whether a bow is due for retirement:
- Have you not had to snip out too many broken hairs? (The more hairs you lose, the thinner the tone.)
- Does the hair still accept rosin at the same rate, and as evenly, as it did when only a few months old?
- Does the hair still grip the string as well as it did?
- Does the bow still give the same tone it once did?
- Is its bamboo still as springy as you'd like it to be? (If so, you could consider just getting the bow rehaired.)
The bow hair itself changes only a little with use; most of the decline in its performance over time can be reversed by cleaning it with alcohol (see starvoid.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board=Erhu&thread=1458&page=1#12679).
Checking a bow for faults:
- Does the screw tighten and loosen the hair, and fully unscrew, smoothly?
- Are the ferrule and hair at a perfect right angle to a plane symmetrically bisecting the bow? (I hope that makes sense.)
- Are the hairs uncreased, in reasonably perfect parallel and reasonably equal in length?
- Do only a few of them have sections which, when rosined and checked under a bright light, ideally with a magnifying glass, are unusually shiny, or opaque and "frosted", or bumpy and uneven, or flat, grooved and unrosined, or sawtooth-edged? (Snip these out, along with any that are unusually long, as close as possible to the ferrule and head.)
As usual, please do correct me or add to this as you think necessary. I'll edit this post accordingly, and have already made some changes.
thanks for input. 