Has the Secret Been Discovered to Surpass the Stradivarius?

[mmasters]

And could it be applied to achieve the holy grail mandolin tone?

I can say I am the discoverer of this and my research has largely been applied to acoustic guitars. But I have thought what about mandolins.

http://www.acousticbreakthrough.com/the-process

The question I wanted to ask is what qualities make for the holy-grail mandolin in your opinion? And does anybody have any video or audio clips they could reference that they believe capture the ultimate mandolin tone?

[sunburst]

Mandolin (or any instrument) tone is purely subjective, there are no "secrets", each person will have his/her own "holy grail" tone, there can be no universal "ultimate".

[Ed Goist]

No.

[Tom Wright]

New materials are always welcome, since the selection of old-growth wood is smaller than in Strad's day, thus carbon-fiber experiments.

Strad's "secret" is found regularly, (the varnish, the wood soaked in Venice's harbor while waiting the saw, etc.), but somehow no new Strads occur. What does occur is good modern instruments made by careful selection of wood, and careful shaping of tops and braces. Many orchestra players and soloists use modern bowed instruments that use wood treated normally, and it's hard to argue that a Monteleone mandolin is deficient in tone.

From the website:

"an audio spectrogram of the before and after results applied to samples of wood used in the backs and sides of instruments. These show an EQ signature emanating from the wood while being held and tapped in the same location, with approximately the same force and at the same distance away from the microphone."

You would have to use a mechanical device to show repeatable differences, and it would be more persuasive if those repeatable results came from the spruce top material. Backs and sides color the tone but don't add power, particularly. (They can lose power if mushy, of course.) Another difficulty is that the best tone results come from a player spending years becoming familiar with an instrument. This is not really testable in the lab, so we depend on accumulated evidence of years of performances and recordings.

But more to the point, Stradivari was not the ultimate powerhouse violin, and not all Strads are prizewinners. Paganini switched to a Guarneri with its more powerful bass so he could play bigger halls.

Stradivari's "secret" was that he was good at making violins. He was good enough that he was a major name from the beginning, made lots of fiddles, and the best have been selected out, preserved lovingly, played extensively, tinkered with carefully, etc. Let us remember that in Strad's day, wood was the main material for almost everything, from boats to teeth, and many instrument makers made cabinetry. These guys knew wood in way we may not be able to imagine.

[sunburst]

I agree with almost all of that, Tom, but in Strad's day there were no chainsaws, no log trucks, no paved roads etc.. The selection of wood is far better now than it was then because it is simply easier to get it to market, and there are still some remaining stands of old growth.

[rico mando]

i thought that the strads had that special sound due to a fungus that had eaten into the wood he was using. swear i either read or saw something about that .

[man dough nollij]

I started a thread a while back about the holy grail tone. It's a little off topic, having nothing to do with strads or wood, but I took an album featuring Sharon Gilchrist with her Gilchrist mandolin and noted all the places where I said, "There! That's the way I like a mandolin to sound!". Personally, I'm not crazy about the real dry, low-sustain, woody "Loar" sound. I've heard some Loar recordings that sounded awesome (they're not all the same, of course), but a lot of the famous ones like Crusher are just not my favorite tone. I can tell when Dawg is playing his Giacomel or Monteleone, and I like the tone better. "Wetter" is one way to describe it. Same deal with Thile-- I prefer his Dude to his Loar. YMMV.

[mrmando]

Once or twice a year there's somebody with a new theory about the "Stradivari secret." These range from plausible to not bloody likely. Dude a few months ago was claiming there was a secret ingredient in the varnish. Had he tested the varnish from an actual Strad? Er, ah, no.

In the present case, the so-called "Stradivarius process" has evidently not been benchmarked against an actual Stradivarius, and hasn't even been applied to a violin!

[mmasters]

Mandolin (or any instrument) tone is purely subjective, there are no "secrets", each person will have his/her own "holy grail" tone, there can be no universal "ultimate".

I don't agree with this for a large part. You could say the beauty of all women is purely subjective but that doesn't account for the fact that some are universally appealing. I see tone similarly and believe a particular tone can be universally appealing as well.

[GRW3]

We should apply a musical 'Turing Test' to this proposition and every other claimant to the 'Strad Secret' Just build the instruments and put them in the market. If they are as good as believed some amount of professional players will adopt them 'in place of a Strad'.

[mmasters]

Once or twice a year there's somebody with a new theory about the "Stradivari secret." These range from plausible to not bloody likely. Dude a few months ago was claiming there was a secret ingredient in the varnish. Had he tested the varnish from an actual Strad? Er, ah, no.

In the present case, the so-called "Stradivarius process" has evidently not been benchmarked against an actual Stradivarius, and hasn't even been applied to a violin!

I think some are confusing that I'm saying this is the Stradivarius secret which I'm not. I think it is to some extent as the instruments have been played so long, many of the fibrous pits have opened but I think this really surpasses what even a Stradivarius can do. It's a bigger claim than anyone has made yet and I think it's valid.

Certainly everyone has been skeptical, even the player and studio tech when I took the guitars in to be recorded thought it was a bit crazy making odd faces and saying things like "they'll have to take my word on my claims at this point" but they were really surprised and impressed seeing the transformation as everyone has been.

The player is a member here, I'll contact him to see if he's interested in talking about it here.

[mrmando]

Hey Michael -- how many Strads have you played?

[foldedpath]

Just a question, but aren't posts like this against forum policy?

• Use of the message board to aggressively market or sell various products and/or services or over-promotion of external web sites is not permitted.

If it's not, then I'm gonna patent a new vibration gadget called the "LoarRiteVibe Process," and spam the forum with posts about it. It seems to work for several vendors of this type of thing here.

[hank]

Send it to big Joe. He's been doing before and after (listening with an educated ear) with two different spins on tone and volume enhancement devices. I doubt many of us would be willing to have our pride and joy in a chemical bath though.

[JeffD]

I strongly suspect there are many modern violin makers that can make a violin every bit as good and perhaps (oh sacriledge) better than a strad, but that there are no really double blind tests that can be done.

Same is true with mandolins I don't doubt.

[NoNickel]

Well .. and I had just gotten over my Tonerite/PrimeVibe hangover.

[Markus]

I don't agree with this for a large part. You could say the beauty of all women is purely subjective but that doesn't account for the fact that some are universally appealing. I see tone similarly and believe a particular tone can be universally appealing as well.

That's where it gets funny with mandolins, though. Some folks care most about the percussive chop, others never use it.

As part of the tone judgement is based on something part of the playing population focuses on and others don't use ... I'd say there are multiple ideals for mandolin. While guitars change tonally with different styles, archtops, etc ... the tonal range of a mandolin I would say is greater. [or we analyze it more, consider it wider ]

Many would say that a Loar F5 is the ideal, but many players choose a very different tone. Some of the most desirable current mandolins to my ear are very different tonally from the Loar standard - at least to my ear.

It seems like mandolinists tend to own a lot more instruments than acoustic guitar players ... as in my limited experience, sometimes you want a long sustain and sweet tone and other times you've got a banjo wailing away and need a thunderous chop and a tone that sticks out and can be heard. It sure seems like players who can afford it have instruments tuned to the various settings ... I would, as sometimes I want very different things that one instrument can't provide.

[mrmando]

I strongly suspect there are many modern violin makers that can make a violin every bit as good and perhaps (oh sacriledge) better than a strad, but that there are no really double blind tests that can be done.

Oh, plenty of tests can and have been done ... I suppose they're all somewhat subjective in that they involve human subjects! We talked here about a test in Paris in which several panelists preferred the tone of a Fustier violin to that of a Strad. This page discusses a couple more tests: a recent one in Germany, in which a Rhonheimer fungus-treated violin beat out a Strad, and a BBC test in 1977 where Stern and Zukerman, among others, had trouble picking out a Strad from a group of four violins. In 1921 the New York Times reported on a test where a Strad came in third in order of preference to another panel of listeners.

But the use of the name "Stradivarius" in the matter under discussion here is entirely for the purpose of hype, as Michael himself admits.

[mrmando]

Another problem here is one of the huge differences between the violin market and the plucked-instrument market: the vast majority of the guitars and mandolins usually hailed as the best-sounding are not 300+ years old ... most of them aren't even 100 years old! Can any of us think of a well-known contemporary guitar or mandolin player who regularly performs on an instrument made before the 20th century?

Taking a modern guitar and treating the wood so that it has properties associated with 300-year-old wood may make that guitar sound better ... but it's not a given that it will then sound like the "holy grail" of guitar tone, whatever that might be. Nobody thinks of a 300-year-old guitar as the holy grail.

[rmartinez]

Sorry for the slight tangent but has anyone done this Heiden/ Loar quiz? Pretty fun little game to see if you can tell which is which and additionally which you prefer.
http://www.lpb.com/mando/heiden/

[Charlieshafer]

This stuff drives me nuts. Tom Wright said it best when he noted that there are a lot of Strads considered "dogs" out there, and that there are a lot of modern makers that are held in very high esteem. The violin dealers up in New England were snickering over a recent purchase at auction of a Strad that went for far more than the ones currently on the market at some dealers. Several folks who had played them all thought the less expensive ones at the dealers were far nicer. Viktoria Mullova never sounded so good as when she chucked her Strad for her Guarneri in her most recent recording of Bach Partitas and Sonatas. So what then exactly is this magic tone? It's the relationship each player has with his/her own instrument, and that's pretty much that.

[mmasters]

As part of the tone judgement is based on something part of the playing population focuses on and others don't use ... I'd say there are multiple ideals for mandolin. While guitars change tonally with different styles, archtops, etc ... the tonal range of a mandolin I would say is greater. [or we analyze it more, consider it wider ]

That's interesting, I kind of had the opposite perception since it seems almost entirely a high end or treble instrument.

Many would say that a Loar F5 is the ideal, but many players choose a very different tone. Some of the most desirable current mandolins to my ear are very different tonally from the Loar standard - at least to my ear.

If that's the ideal I would love to enhance a custom shop recreation of one to go up against the real deal.

[mmasters]

Another problem here is one of the huge differences between the violin market and the plucked-instrument market: the vast majority of the guitars and mandolins usually hailed as the best-sounding are not 300+ years old ... most of them aren't even 100 years old! Can any of us think of a well-known contemporary guitar or mandolin player who regularly performs on an instrument made before the 20th century?

Taking a modern guitar and treating the wood so that it has properties associated with 300-year-old wood may make that guitar sound better ... but it's not a given that it will then sound like the "holy grail" of guitar tone, whatever that might be. Nobody thinks of a 300-year-old guitar as the holy grail.

I wouldn't say the 300 year old ones are this way, just that the real old and coveted player instruments are more in this direction than typical instruments. I guess what I'm saying is there's more potential being unlocked with this than I believe is possible through any other avenue - hence my willingness to challenge a percieved ideal like the Stradivarius (or any other instrument held in very high regard). Having played many of the acclaimed best guitars out there (many in the 20-30K range) I know this can transform a really good to great instrument and put it up there in league with the very best if not past it.

[capokid]

Build it and they will come.

[Cuba Ridge]

The NPR said that it could have been the climate was during a period of cold and damper conditions.

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/s...toryId=1544179