Ceccherini photos

I've been working a bit on the new Ceccherini yesterday and today. I've repaired the bridge (one "tooth" was missing), lowered the action slightly (to 2.3mm on G and 1.7mm on E at 12th fret), lubricated the tuners, cleaned the top and put new Lenzners on. Intonation is just right with the bridge in its original position as set out by the marker buttons.

The Lenzners will need a day or two to settle in, but first impressions are that this is indeed a much brighter mandolin than my other Ceccherini, and that it is simultaneously loud and cultivated. Very promising. Not much of the velvety smoothness of the other one, but that may come when the strings have settled, or perhaps a bit later when the instrument wakes up.

The overall impression is still the same as when I first saw it: this strikes me as being a mandolin new from the luthier, not the seasoned vintage mandolin one would expect after a century or so.

I've put some photos up.

Martin

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Originally Posted by (martinjonas @ Nov. 06 2004, 16:30)

I've repaired the bridge (one "tooth" was missing)

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Just curious, Martin. How did you repair that bridge. It looked like the piece had broken off altogether.

Also: what is the wood that surrounds the top. it sort of looks reddish in the photos.

Do both your Ceccherinis have zero frets and brass saddles?

Jim

Such lovely instruments, Martin. How nice that you're able to do the repairs/adjustments yourself too. (Will have to wait another two weeks for my Stridente to be completed).

Enjoy your new mandolin!

Doreen

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Originally Posted by (jgarber @ Nov. 06 2004, 17:02)

Just curious, Martin. How did you repair that bridge. It looked like the piece had broken off altogether.

Also: what is the wood that surrounds the top. it sort of looks reddish in the photos.

Do both your Ceccherinis have zero frets and brass saddles?

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The bridge repair was a bit tricky, but I'm rather pleased how it worked out. #The tooth was indeed missing altogether, so I had to make a new one. #The easiest way would have been to use a sliver of ebony from somewhere else. #However, I had none, and also wanted to have an exact colour match. #What I did was to use the filings and dust that I had left over after lowering the action (taken from the top of the bridge underneath the metal saddle) and mix it with superglue. #That gave me a little nugget of reconstituted ebony, which can be sanded and filed into shape pretty finely. #The first new tooth I made broke in half when I tried to fit it, but luckily the nugget was large enough for two attempts and the second one worked fine. #Sanded it down until just oversize, then superglued it into the gap and used fine sand paper to match the surface with the original bridge. #I expected it to look a bit coarse, but in fact you have to look pretty hard to see the difference at all.

The binding is some sort of highly figured fruit wood. #If I remember right, Victor has in the past said it's cherrywood; the seller said tulipwood. #I wouldn't know the difference, but it's rather attractive and indeed a luminous reddish-brown.

The plainer Ceccherini has the nut and saddle out of brass or bronze and the new one out of an untarnished silvery metal: might be nickel or might actually be a silver alloy. #The nut is worked a bit differently between the two, but works in the same way: it's a single piece of metal which has teeth on the tuner side, acting as string spacers, and a smooth ledge on the bridge side, acting as zero fret. #There's a close-up of it among my previous photos I posted a while back.

Martin

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Originally Posted by (jgarber @ Nov. 06 2004, 17:02)

Also: what is the wood that surrounds the top. it sort of looks reddish in the photos.

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I would wager on satinwood (Rutaceae). #It was a pretty popular binding material on Italian mandolins.

I've just got around to recording the sound of the double-top Ceccherini, with the result being here (click on the peghead next to "martinjonas1969"). This is Westphalia Waltz, with lead part played on the bowlback and a harmony part later overdubbed on an F5-clone (Washburn M3SW). The tremolo isn't as smooth as it could be, but I think the tone of the Ceccherini records fairly well. My pitch for introducing bowlbacks into bluegrass...

Martin

Very nice, Martin. I do like the sound of the Ceccherini. Bell-like to my ears.

Jim

Very nice. You can't beat that bowlback sound.

-John.

Nice, Martin! It sounds as good as it looks.

Doreen

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Originally Posted by Martin Jonas

I've just got around to recording the sound of the double-top Ceccherini, with the result being here (click on the peghead next to "martinjonas1969"). This is Westphalia Waltz, with lead part played on the bowlback and a harmony part later overdubbed on an F5-clone (Washburn M3SW). The tremolo isn't as smooth as it could be, but I think the tone of the Ceccherini records fairly well. My pitch for introducing bowlbacks into bluegrass...

Martin

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Martin, a search for "Westphalia Waltz" brought me to this thread. I don't see your recording. Am I doing something wrong?

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Originally Posted by Sherry Cadenhead

Martin, a search for "Westphalia Waltz" brought me to this thread. I don't see your recording. Am I doing something wrong?

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I have this problem too, usually I can only see maybe half of the vids on tune a week, a lot of the tunes that are older than about 2017 are seen as blanc (white) space.

I assumed it was a YouTube storage problem, that the vids are still there but under different addresses?

It’s often to do with your browser tracking protection settings (in m case it’s Firefox). I figured out recently that some remote content relies on tracking to link within the forum posts. If you temporarily disable tracking protection the page should reload with the video showing. However in this case It may be a reorganisation of the source has broken the links; this was back in 2005.

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Originally Posted by Sherry Cadenhead

Martin, a search for "Westphalia Waltz" brought me to this thread. I don't see your recording. Am I doing something wrong?

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Hi Sherry,

This is a thread from 2004, long before I started using Youtube. This was an MP3 recording hosted on a long-gone mandolin music sharing site ("mandolinproject.150m.com") which Cafe members were using back then. I don't think I have that particular recording of "Westphalia Waltz" any more, and I suspect it wasn't very good -- I was still pretty new on mandolin back in 2004, and even newer in figuring out recording technology.

I have, however, recorded the tune again only last week as it came up at the Song-A-Week social group tune. My new recording is on Youtube:


https://youtu.be/Jv3Ymbea3Sk

Not on my Ceccherini, though -- this one is played on my Gibson A-Jr.

Martin

Beautiful, Martin! Thanks for sharing.

That A sounds great! Where are all those old pictures from? Sorry I know there was a lot of them but some looked as if they could be from my neck of the woods, Out west in the Dakotas and Iowa.

Thanks, John and Sherry! It's a bit off-topic in the classical forum, and in this thread, but I'm glad you've enjoyed the new recording.

The photos are all from the small hamlet of Westphalia, Texas (population 186!), which gave its name to the tune Westphalia Waltz. Although the tune appears to derive utlimately from a Polish folk song, the story goes that it entered the repertoire of the Western Swing band The Lone Star Playboys in around 1946 through its fiddler, Cotton Collins. However, they didn't have a name for it, so when they played it at a concert in Westphalia, Texas, the local promoter suggested they name it after the village. The Lone Star Playboys later became Hank Thompson's backing band, and the tune became popular when Hank recorded it.

Martin

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Originally Posted by Martin Jonas

Thanks, John and Sherry! It's a bit off-topic in the classical forum, and in this thread, but I'm glad you've enjoyed the new recording.

The photos are all from the small hamlet of Westphalia, Texas (population 186!), which gave its name to the tune Westphalia Waltz. Although the tune appears to derive utlimately from a Polish folk song, the story goes that it entered the repertoire of the Western Swing band The Lone Star Playboys in around 1946 through its fiddler, Cotton Collins. However, they didn't have a name for it, so when they played it at a concert in Westphalia, Texas, the local promoter suggested they name it after the village. The Lone Star Playboys later became Hank Thompson's backing band, and the tune became popular when Hank recorded it.

Martin

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My Aunt and Uncle live down there somewhere. I am going to ask them how close they are.