Don Rickert Musical Instruments

A Different Way of Achieving the Range of an Octave Violin and Octave Viola: Part I

Attention!: This is an older post. Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. This article is by D. Rickert Musical Instruments, a highly regarded designer and maker of acoustic purpose-built octave violins and violas, as well as 4-string and 5-string electric violins. All of these instruments are sold via Don Rickert Musician Shop. We have no reason for bias on the topic of acoustic vs. electric instruments, as we make both! Hopefully this lack of bias is reflected in the following article. Introduction This is the first in a three part series on the topic of using a 4-string or 5-string electric violin (and acoustic instruments with the right kind of pickup installed) together with the necessary effect signal processors to achieve a sound either one or two octaves lower than the violin’s or viola’s actual tuning. Our focus here is on achieving lower octaves; however the principles apply to other amazing sonic feats as well, such as playing harmony to your own playing in real time, or generating the sound of sympathetic strings, such as would be found on a contemporary Hardanger fiddle or a Baroque Viola d’Amore. In this first article, I address the matter of whether an electronic option to violin octave synthesis is a desirable alternative for you. Our Acoustic Bowed Octave Instruments When we started our company almost a decade ago, it was the musical instruments division of Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC (DBA Don Rickert Research & Design), a design research and new product... Read more →

Modern Travel and Backpacker Violins: Baroque Pochettes and Modern Travel Violins at the Don Rickert Musician Shop (Part 2 of 2 Parts)

Attention!: We have more recent articles about Travel Violins. Better still - See the Travel and Backpacker Fiddle category at the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Modern Travel and Backpacker Violins D. Rickert Musical Instruments makes some of the world’s finest Modern Travel Violins (aka Backpacker Fiddles) and more models (6 models currently; one a 5-string). We also make two Pochette models; one a Baroque (early to mid-1700s) and one a Pre-Modern (1780s). All of these instruments are available at the Don Rickert Musician Shop. This article is about the modern Travel Violins and Backpacker Fiddles you will find at Don Rickert Musician Shop. You might also want to read Baroque Pochettes and Modern Travel Violins at the Don Rickert Musician Shop (Part 1 of 2 Parts): Pochettes, which is about our pochettes, and some of the lore associated with them. Travel and Backpacker Violins and Fiddles by D. Rickert Musical Instruments These are instruments that look superficially like Barqoue pochettes (pocket fiddles); however, they are full-length violins intended for backpacking and travel. All of our travel and backpacker violins are full 4/4 length instruments with chin rests and shoulder rest adapters. They are very popular among traveling classical violinists as well as adventure-loving fiddlers. Unlike the cheap travel fiddles that cost much less than ours on the market, ours respond to the bow like a full-size instrument and are quite sonorous...be sure to watch the videos below. How Good Can a Travel Violin Sound? Most makers of modern travel violins... Read more →

Baroque Pochettes and Modern Travel Violins at the Don Rickert Musician Shop (Part 1 of 2 Parts): Pochettes

Attention!: We have more recent articles about Travel Violins. Better still - See the Travel and Backpacker Fiddle category at the Don Rickert Musician Shop. If it is Baroque pochettes, violins or violoncellos da spalla you want to see, go to the Baroque Instruments Category at the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Introduction D. Rickert Musical Instruments makes some of the world’s finest Modern Travel Violins (aka Backpacker Fiddles) and more models (6 models currently; one a 5-string). We also make two Pochette models; one a Baroque (early to mid-1700s) and one a Pre-Modern (1780s). All of these instruments are available at the Don Rickert Musician Shop. The article is about the pochettes, and some of the lore associated with them. Baroque Pochettes (the ancestors of modern travel violins) These are the 18th Century instruments whose popularity was primarily from the 1750s through the 1780s. The pochette (French for “pocket”) was a small violin. They are also known as “pocket fiddles” and “kit fiddles” (as kitten, implying small). The pochette’s development was driven in large part by itinerant Dancing Masters (private dance instructors), who preferred very portable violins that could be carried, with its short bow, in a sleeve (called a pocket or “pochette”, as many were French) sewn onto the Dancing Master’s coat. This was the origin of pockets in many items of modern clothing. The Baroque pochette is inspiration for the modern travel violins and fiddles by Don Rickert Musical Instruments. The Historical-Political Events that Gave Rise to the... Read more →

Don Rickert Musician Shop: Your Source for Unique Bowed and Fretted Instruments and Accessories Ranging from Baroque Period to Today’s Cutting Edge

Don Rickert Musician Shop (D. Rickert Musical Instruments): Your Source for Unique Bowed and Fretted Instruments and Accessories Ranging from Baroque Period to Today’s Cutting Edge Introduction It is quite clear that we are the place to come for the unique stuff…things you just cannot get at either the corner music store, traditional violin shops or the online mega-stores. What are these things that musicians, and the occasional museum, come to us for? Over the 9 years we have been in business, our analysis of search engine “hits” to our websites and online store, corroborated by actuals sales records, indicates that we are best known, in descending order for the following: Modern Travel and Backpacker Violins The world’s finest and more models (to meet different player needs)…5 base models; all customizable! We sell more travel violins than anything else, by a long shot. Yup, real musicians are willing to pay 3 to 5 times as much for a real luthier-built travel violin than for a toy instrument. See the Bowed Instruments (Regular Offerings) > Travel and Backpacker Fiddles at the Don Rickert Musician Shop Octave Violins, Violas and Octave Violas (aka “Chin Cellos”) Best and most innovative. Ours have been played by some of the greatest fiddle innovators in the world. Our instruments are on some CDs by some of the greats, including the musician responsible for the re-birth of the octave violin, Darol Anger (and most recently Alasdair Fraser and Natalie Haas, their “Abundance” CD). For our current offerings,... Read more →

Don Rickert Musician Shop is Unique: Part 1 (Hard to Find Stuff)

Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Don Rickert Musician Shop (D. Rickert Musical Instruments) is the place to go for unique instruments that are either very hard or even impossible to find anywhere else. Some examples: Travel / Backpacker Violins and Fiddles We make and sell the finest innovative and ergonomically perfect travel/backpacker violins in the world. Several dozen customers a year opt for one of our travel violins, despite the fact that they cost from 3 to 4 times as much as our apparent competitors. 5-String Violins We make and sell one of best 5-string violins that money can buy (note: There ARE some very fine 5-string instruments by competitors). We also sell the very nice new 5-String acoustic-electric Realist violin by David Gage. We also make and sell an incredible 5-string travel violin. Octave Violins and Violas We make the most advanced and best-sounding octave violins and octave violas (aka “chin cellos”). Dr. Rickert has been researching acoustic octave violins for more than 15 years. He has designed a number of such instruments over the past decade, each new one better than the rest. We sell a lot of these. Top recording artists own a number of them. Tertis Wide-Body Violas in all Sizes We are one of the only U.S. based sources of extremely high quality Tertis wide-body violas, in sizes from 15” to 16.5” (note: viola size is designated by the length of the instrument body, from the saddle to the neck joint). These instruments... Read more →

Introducing the New Don Rickert Musician Shop

The Don Rickert Musician Shop is the new online retail face of Don Rickert Musical Instruments, premiere designer and maker of innovative custom and historic musical instruments. Since starting our musical instruments enterprise in 2007, we have dealt primarily in those of the bowed variety (e.g. violins, fiddles and related instruments such as octave fiddles). We have also designed and made a number of fretted instruments along the way: mandolins, parlor guitars, acoustic bass guitars, tenor guitars and the like. We will soon be branching out in a serious way into the world of fretted musical instruments. Look forward to some really interesting mandolins, octave mandolins, mandocellos, parlor guitars, acoustic bass guitars, tenor guitars and the like. They will start showing up soon as R&D instruments in our new Custom Shop. Our business is owned and run by Donald Rickert, Ph.D., IDSA, who has been playing, designing, making and modifying stringed musical instruments of many types for more than 40 years. Dr. Rickert is a Professional Member of the Industrial Designers Society of America (designated IDSA) We started out as a general product research & design firm in 2005, when we were incorporated as a Limited Liability Company (LLC) in the State of Georgia, USA. The original corporate name, which is still in effect today, is Wiederholt & Rickert Partners, LLC. The two founding Members were Brad Wiederholt and Donald E. Rickert, Ph.D., IDSA. In 2007, Brad left the firm to pursue his high-technology interests. Donald Rickert became sole Owner.... Read more →

The Use of Tuned Porting in Modern Stringed Instruments

Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Tuned porting has been a critical aspect of audio system speaker enclosure design for many years. Only recently, has the idea of porting beyond what is provided by the sound holes, been considered in the design of musical instruments, particularly stringed instruments, plucked as well as bowed. With stringed musical instruments, porting refers to strategically placing extra holes (in addition to the sound holes) to work magic with the aperture to air volume ratio of the instrument. Two of these holes are clearly evident in the photo of the new Rickert Travel - Backpacker Violin by Don Rickert Musical Instruments. Porting often involves internal air tunnels which are, through much experimentation, tuned to control the in-flow and out-flow of air in the sound box when the instrument is played, resulting in a much more powerful sound output than previously thought possible.This is analogous to the incredible big sound achieved by tiny speaker systems by Bose and other innovators in the audio equipment field. Creating a porting system for a musical instrument is largely uncharted territory. It requires many iterations of empirical testing. Most people think that the physics of traditional violins is fully understood, by applying the acoustical principles discovered by the likes of physician, psychologist, physicist and philosopher, Hermann von Helmholtz. The fact is, the "Helmholtz Effect" and other scientific discoveries only partially explain how a guitar or traditional violin generate sound, much less how a state-of-the-art ported instrument makes pleasant noise... Read more →

Solving the "how do you hold this thing" problem with historic pochettes

Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. We sell an 18th type pochette (pocket fiddle) under the Neil Gow Pochette and Thomas Jefferson Pochette names, depending on the sales venue. This instrument is EXTREMELY popular, especially among our customer/friends in Japan. The original instruments on which our replica is based, as with all historic pochettes, are generally held with some variation of the "on-the-arm" or Baroque hold. Unless one is totally dedicated to Baroque-style playing, this way of holding the instrument gets old pretty quick, especially since one is pretty much limited to playing in 1st and 3rd positions with the Baroque hold (yes, I know that an expert can play in all positions, but how many of us really want to do that?) The majority of folks who buy the Neil Gow Pochette end up using a "transitional hold", much like that depicted in the William Sidney Mount painting, Left and Right. The problem many encounter is when they rest their chin on the instrument, there is nowhere is put that chin other than on the tailpiece, and this mutes the instrument considerably. Well, one of our inventive customers in Japan, Kazuhisa Yoshida, devised a solution, shown in the photo on the left. This mini rest is made by cutting down and shaping a standard over-the-tailpiece chin rest. The cool thing is that I believe that there is an historic basis for this solution. I could swear that I have seen photos of historic instruments with tiny "bridges" over... Read more →

Take-Apart Travel Violin by Don Rickert Design

Sometimes you just need to have a travel violin or backpacker fiddle that can be quickly assembled and disassembled and packed into a small box (15" x 9" x 3" deep). By quickly, we mean less than 5 minutes. Well, here it is, the new Take-Apart Travel Violin by Don Rickert Design. And there is more: this fiddle DOES NOT need to be de-tuned and re-tuned every time it is taken apart and later put back together. The instrument actually sounds very good, considering the removable neck and the various mechanisms not found on a regular violin or fiddle. Click on the image below or its caption to see a slide show of how it works. Don Rickert Take-Apart Travel Violin The photos pretty much speak for themselves, though it should be noted that this instrument stays amazingly close to being in tune after being disassembled and then reassembled. The first prototype of this instrument several years ago was Don Rickert's first experiment with a violin without a sound post, as the sound post staying in place was a vexing problem for an instrument that is repeatedly being taken apart and put back together again. Instead of a sound post, this instrument utilizes a "tone bar" or small bassbar under the treble side of the bridge foot. There is, of course, a full-size bassbar under the G-side bridge foot. If anyone would be interested in purchasing this instrument, it will soon be available at: The Adventurous Muse online store The... Read more →

Video of Dr. Rickert Installing Pure Gut Strings: UPDATE

Yesterday (Saturday, June 11) we shot most of the video of Dr. Rickert of Don Rickert Design installing 18th Century type gut strings (copper wound g string and unwound pure gut d', a' and e' strings) on a an 1780s style pochette. We were also shooting video for a demonstration of the use of basso continuo fiddle accompaniment using our new foot pump bass/chord/drone box (we have not named it yet), a free reed instrument similar to an Indian shruti box that runs on compressed air supplied by a powerful foot bellows rather than the traditional hand bellows of shruti boxes and harmoniums. both videos will be available on YouTube in several days Read more →