Blondie: An Acoustic Journey

OK, so I haven't had an acoustic fiddle in years (a number way greater than thirty) and it seemed like there were times when such a beast might fit into the needs of the various crews I hang out with.  I've spent several years with various flavors of electric fiddles (see the "Silk Purse" threads below) and some of those progeny are running around loose with local bands. So, I had some idea of what I wanted, and it wasn't a stock 'ordinary' fiddle.
Lets face it, there's something like nine current or former national fiddle champions within spitting distance of town (around 60K population) and I ain't competin'wid that.

I started out looking at the Chin Cello things that the BeeSwingiest one is always going on about, but they always seemed both too limited and kinda expensive at $399 for a toy I figured I wouldn't use all that much.  I kept looked around for a couple months and one day a "Bellefina Violina" 16 in. 5 string popped up on the wwbw.com site in Used, 'Condition D' (that means busted) condition for $150 with the case (no bow or accessories). Type Violina into the search box on that site and you'll see it.
It took a while to get them to respond with an overview of what was wrong with it (They're normally over $700) but this supposedly just had a missing bow, broken bridge and some scuffing, so I went for it.

I guess the case was about $80 on it's own so the risk didn't seem high.
I would say somebody kicked it across the room. There were black shoe marks in a couple places, a couple minor cracks and a whole bunch of scuff/skid/abrasion marks. Yep the bridge was busted. Looks like it folded in half when it hit something, Soundpost might not be in quite the right position (down)  either. Hmmm, I bought a project. Nothing new...
Stripped it down, a little gluing  (Sacrilege! Super Glue...) Some stripper, some sanding and a little thinned spar varnish. Yes, I know, also sacrilege. Got all the black marks and scars out. Nice thin finish. Doesn't look half bad. Found a Thomastik Alu 5 string  tuner tail piece. There was an old viola bridge in the parts box. Not quite tall enough to give the proper curve while keeping the strings up high enough for a buzz-free existence, but good enough for a first try.

Whew those stock strings were awful. I understand it was originally a 5 string viola with a low 'F' string. The top string looked like an 'A' and everything else was bigger: Clue.
Everything else sounded BAD too. Still that range sounded like a good idea, so I went looking for a better string set. Found some SuperSensitive oddballs after a week or two of looking and emailing and waiting.  That F string is big (and bloody expensive). Considerable fussing with the strings and bridge and soundpost over the next week and... Crap. Could not get it to 'sound' properly on the F. Also it was a little floppy so bowing tended to push it sharp. Hmmm,  thinking... thinking...
Mmmm, if we tune it up a whole note we have a G. So instead of a F to A (low to high) we have an octave fiddle with an extra 'b' string on top.  Maybe not what I set out toward, but it works surprisingly well.

It needed a slightly taller bridge and some sort of pickup. Thing does NOT make enough noise to cut through on it's own, unlike them screechy violin thingys.  I finally decided to do both at once and had Brad work up one of his famous Bradivarus pickup bridges. The viola size one. Arrived in about a week. Nice! Reasonably priced too.  I figured having a professional deal with it and the fine points of sound-postery wasn't a bad idea, so off it went to the luthier's.

...and came back with the highest action I have ever seen. There's cellos that don't have strings this high. It's NOT all their fault as I did say I wanted it higher...but wow. This is a picture of my original bridge (too low) and the new one (too high) in there together.  Over 6mm difference there in the middle.

As luck would have it there was a gig in three days and me without a bridge jack (worth their weight in gold, or $25, try:  http://www.gostrings.com/violbridjac1.html ) so a bit of tape, some construction foam and a few woodchips later I winkled it outta there and beat it to death with a sander.

It's a lot more playable now. Seems they also shimmed up the nut 'to match' so I'm in the process of re-cutting the nut grooves to get the action down on that end.
How does it sound? We're chasing an odd resonance in the G and D strings when bowed loudly and there will be another iteration as we try to find the right B (ya don't see that every day) string, but other than that it's not bad at all. Been out on stage a couple times. Pretty well received so far.


Yes, yes you'll want recordings that tell you nothing. I'll get there sometime.
Bow? Oh yeah, bow. Heavy Viola bow would work. I'm still using the 'Wide, High Tension' Incredibow I've been bashing on for years now. Works a treat!