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.
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:
Do you want a "full body suit"...not on you, but for your violin or fiddle? We have not figured out fiddle body piercing yet, but we are working on it. Read on...
The decoration of musical instruments has been done for hundreds of years. Such decoration has included inlay work of various types, painting, etching, carving, application of gold leaf and "rosing", the Norwegian nickname for "rosemaling", which is the tattoo-like inkwork one sees on Hardanger Fiddles.
Some Historic and Recent Examples
Giovanni Paolo Maggini (c. 1580 - c. 1630), while making violins without special decoration, is best best known for his later instruments that two rows of purfling on the top and back. Many of Maggini's instruments are ornamented on the back with decorations such as Saint Andrew's Cross, clover leaves, crests and other motifs. His most famous decorations are designs accomplished by extending the inner of the two purfling rows onto the backs of the instruments to form various designs, as illustrated.
Antonio Stradivari (1644 – 1737) is not generally known for elaborate violin decoration. He did, however, produce a number of instruments with complex and beautiful decorations. Many of Strad's decorations look like inkwork, but they are, in fact, inlays. The photo of a quartet of inlaid instruments shows some of Stradivari's best inlay decoration, for which he charged huge sums of money, according to lore.
The Hardanger Fiddle, or "hardingfele" in Norwegian, originated in the mid-1600s in a region of western Norway traditionally known as Hardanger. Unlike regular fiddles or violins, Hardanger fiddles have 4 primary strings that are played, with 4, to as many as 8, sympathetic drone strings that run under its hollow fingerboard. For hundreds of years, Hardanger Fiddles have been elaborately decorated with black ink patterns, generally floral in nature, called "rosing", which is short for "rosemaling", the Norwegian word for decorative painting. While actually constructed differently from violins, the Hardanger Fiddle has looks much like a tatooed conventional fiddle with a really long peg box and a lot more tuning pegs.
Southern Mountain Fiddles: In the late 19th Century and early 20th Century, there were many fiddle makers working in the Southeastern mountains (e.g. Southern part of the Appallachians) of the U.S. These "mountain luthiers" pretty much dissappeared (as well as fiddle playing, at least in public) when the prevaling regional religious belief (now revised, mostly) held that it was sinful to play the fiddle.
During their prime, these Southern Mountain luthiers made instruments loosly based on the Maggini pattern. The decoration is often "over-the-top", incorporating dyes, inkwork and almost always crude mother-of-pearl inlay work. The photo illustrates what appears to be a nicely-done example of one of these rare old instruments.
Note: We see a number of these century-old fiddles at fiddlers' conventions. Typically, a man in his 80s will want to sell his father's fiddle to us. The sellers themselves do not play, as they grew up during the "fiddling is a sin" era. Very few of these extremely ornate fiddles are in decent playing condition, as they have often been hidden for many decades in attics; thus, subjected to poor environmental conditions.
Recent Fiddles with Inkwork: The extremely creative violin luthier, Tim Phillips, is based in the small mountain town of Mochdre (properly pronounced Mock druh but ofen pronounced Mock dree locally) in the county of Powys, Wales, UK. Phllips' extremely innovative violins gererally are shaped quite differtly from standard violins and fiddles. Tim has supplied some of the greatest fiddlers in the world with instrments. At least on some of his instruments, including a fiddle played by the Irish musician, Sharon Shannon, whimsical inkwork is employed in its design. This cool inkwork can be seen in the photos of Sharon Shannon's fiddle.
You can see additional images of Tim Phillips' violin inkwork, as well as other historic and recent decorated violins and fiddles in our photo gallery: Historic and New Rosed and Inlaid Instruments
Don Rickert Lutherie:
See a variety of fiddle, violin and pochette inkwork possibilities for our instruments in these photo galleries:
In all cases, these are instruments for which we do the varnishing, as inkwork is done on sealed bare wood BEFORE the varnish is applied.
The price for our "rosed" instruments varies according to the following factors:
The complexity and size of the design
The method by which the inkwork is applied: On relatively flat surfaces, such as a pochette, travel violin or the ribs (sides) of a Rickert Customizable Fiddle, a process called dry ink transfer can be used. On surfaces with complex curves, such as the top or back of a Rickert Customizable Fiddle, the inkwork must be done by hand by a skilled pen-and-ink or tatoo artist...this is almost exactly like the process a tatoo artist must use when tattooing a person (except with pens rather than an electric tattoo needle).
Original Custom Design vs. an Existing Design: There literally thousands of existing tatoo stencils (called "flash"), which can be modified to "tattoo" an instrument. A completely original design is certainly possible, but involves extra effort and, thus, additional cost.
You can expect to pay about as much for instrument inkwork as you would for getting yourself tattooed.
Bottom Line
We are able to apply just about any design imaginable to your instrument. The varnish is applied OVER the design, making it about as permanent as a tattoo on a person. We DO reserve the right to reject offensive images. After all, it is our name on the label inside the instrument.
Needless to say, once one of our instruments with custom inkwork is NOT returnable. That being said, we bend over backwards and give you a "Photoshop" visualization of what your instrument will look like after tatooing. We proceed when you sign-off on the visualizations and agree on the price.
Now, that is a lot more than you get before getting your body tatooed!
Don Rickert Lutherie is gearing up to offer custom "tatooing", more properly called "rosing" or inkwork decoration for a number of our musical instruments. This service will be available via our Adventurous Muse Store. We will have a proper article about what we are doing and the history behind it in the next few days.
In the mean time, you may enjoy taking a look at four new photo albums on our Facebook site.
Flat-Top Flatiron-Style Mandolin by Don Rickert Design(now Don Rickert Lutherie) and available from the Adventurous Muse Store is of the general type known as either "pancake" or "flariron". It has that mellow, yet still loud and powerful sound sought by Celtic (both Irish and Scottish) players, as well as many Old-Time mandolin players.
The ancestor of the Flatiron was a mandolin made by Gibson during the WWI years, known as the Army-Navy (or simply A-N) mandolin. A soldier or sailor could purchase one for $12 and the general public paid $15. This was considerably less than the A1, which sold for about $50, the A4 about $80, F2 about $100 and F4 about $125. The F5 (the original Lloyd Loar model that Bill Monroe played during most of his career in Bluegrass) came out in 1922 for $250, which was a lot of money back then.
The A-Ns were durable instruments made to withstand the rigors of trench warfare and the sounded pretty good, to boot. They were suitable, and indeed used, to play all genres of music. The World War I Gibson Army-Navy models became the basic design for the late Flatiron "pancake" mandolins later built in Bozeman MT during the period when Flatiron was an independent manufacturer, and later when Gibson bought Flatiron.
GibsonFlatiron mandolins were made well into the 1980s, after which they were owned by Weber Mandolins for a period of time extending into the 1990s. The F-Style mandolins of today (actual Gibsons and their imitators, such as “The Loar” mandolin that we sell...Loar Mandolin LM 500 VS (AKA Golden Age Mandolin)) were developed for the kind of playing and sound that Bill Monroe wanted for his jazz-infused Old-Time music, later, and still, known as Bluegrass. It is noteworthy that the new Loar Mandolins are named after Lloyd Loar, who, while working for Gibson for several years, designed Bill Monroe's famous mandolin.
You will rarely see a Bluegrass mandolin player using anything but an F-Style, with the occasional A-Style non-conformist.
