It's about violins with bassbar and soundpost cracks: When u have a violin with a repaired soundpost and bassbar crack can the sound still be nice ? Or maybe with a good repair be the same as before?

And why does the violin's worth get so much less after this repairs?

Thanks

The answers are as follows:

1. Yes

2. Yes

3. The answer to this one lies in the location of the crack.  Because the areas around the soundpost and bass bar receive much force, (they are at the feet of the bridge) and because ALL of the instrument "tone" passes through these areas, these areas must be in the finest of working order.  They, therefore, must be repaired with a much higher level of skill than say a wing crack.  Wing cracks and saddle cracks are not viewed suspiciously in appraisal, but soundpost cracks and bass bar cracks are.

 The difference between a soundpost crack and a wing crack is the difference between a crack in your engine block or a wheel bearing versus a crack in your air cleaner cover or hubcap.

Wing cracks and saddle cracks can simply be repaired with glue.  If a luthier takes more time, also with cleats.  But soundpost and bass bar cracks must be patched.  Simply applying glue into the crack will not fix the problem.

To see a sample of the two, patches and cleats, look at the internal photograph of fiddle #48, the Paganini Strad on this very website.  (The Soil Strad, #251, also has a very fine soundpost patch, but no cleated repairs).  The patch is a fine oval shape.  The cleats are the finely cut and fitted squares on the table seam and the two cracks on either side of the neck in the picture of Paganini Strad.

To be installed properly, a patch is fitted this way.  First, the top is removed.  Then the crack is filled with glue and realigned so that the outside varnished area is perfectly fitted.  It then must dry overnight.  The following day the luthier removes as much wood at the crack as he can without poking through.  Generally, the top around the soundpost area is about 3 mm thick.  This means a luthier must use a gouge and scraper and remove that wood until he is almost through to the other side at the crack area.  If he can, at the crack area he wants it less than 1 mm thick.  Ideally, he would want to remove the wood until he only had a hairbreadth left.  He then must taper this area so that the area he has removed is now looking like a large dent in the inside of the top.  The patch must then be cut and fitted.  He must shape this patch so that the patch placed without glue yet applied inside the dent touches in all locations.  It is then glued and dried overnight.  The following day he must remove excess wood so that it is the same as before the crack.

If it is a bass bar crack, he also must  remove the old bar and fit a new one after he is done with the above procedure.

The effect on tone of either a soundpost or bass bar patch usually can be corrected by adjustment to the bass bar before the top is glued back on the corpse.

The top must be clamped to the corpse overnight and then the crack in the varnish must be repaired.

As you can see this is a LOT of work and must be charged accordingly.

In contrast, a cleat can simply fit to the top with the process of filling the crack with glue and then applying the cleat on top of this.

With this in mind, if a fiddle has a bass bar or post crack and has not been repaired, or repaired well, one can see how this damage would cut into the value of the instrument.  Even if repaired, because it is difficult to ascertain how well the patch has been fitted, the repaired area would still be looked at with suspicion.

This also helps one see the importance of fitting a soundpost properly.  The correct way to fit a post is to insert it in place with just enough force that it doesn't fall when the post setting tool is removed.  It should NEVER be then pushed into a more snug position. The ideal fit means that without strings, you would be able to lightly squeexe the two "C" bouts together with your hands and the post would fall over. In reality, this once the instrument is strung would not happen.  The tension of the strings will force the bridge to the top and hold it in place.

Best wishes and hope this helps.

Thanks a lot

One other note on the bass bar crack.  This has a bearing on several techniques of antiquity, but possibly has little to do with your question.

I have never seen a bass bar crack that did not also have asundry other table cracks.  Often they have some other severe ones near the seam.  This is my experience.  If anyone else has seen differently, I would be interested in hearing about it.

Sound post cracks have little to do with instrument's original construction as a rule.  They generally are the result of a soundpost crammed into place too tightly by a set of hands at a later date.  Sometimes they are the result of impact to the top or back, but usually from over-eager post adjustment.   Bass bar cracks, in contrast, appear to me to be greatly impacted by construction technique.  This is also true of several nuisance table cracks, and therefore I would like to offer these two observations.

First.  In spite of the fact that "youtube" keeps featuring movies of violin makers making a fiddle in the 3 or 4 minute movie slot, and at some point the film will demonstrate a maker clamping the table seam at the joining process as we hear Vivaldi playing in the background, it is this clamping of the seam that appears to me to cause alot of trouble later on in the life of the fiddle.  Here is why.

When two quarter cut spruce pieces are air dried for months or years at a time, they tend to change shape and must be thoroughly dressed before joining.  A maker must plane and scrape until the pieces, when held together, touch each other evenly in every part of the seam without applying pressure.  I am speaking about the table seam that runs the length of the fiddle under the fingerboard and terminating at the saddle.  Generally in the art it is said that when the two pieces are held together before glue is applied, no light should pass through the joint.

The reality is that spruce (the material of the top in almost all fiddles) is fairly easy to compress.  If the initial planing of the edges does not produce a tight fit, it is possible to clamp the two pieces together and compress them enough to "let no light shine through."  Thus, a maker may "cheat" and make up for his poor fit by clamping the two halves into submission.  The result is also a tight fit that otherwise must be accomplished by painstakingly fitting the edges of the joint one to the other.  Ostensibly, there appears to be little difference in these two methods.  There is, however, a dramatic difference in the two methods.

If we FORCE the spruce joint with a clamp, it will comply.  This is because spruce is fairly soft and will compress rather than resist under pressure.  But just as a spring compressed stores the forces that put it in that position, the spruce also stores the compression from the clamp and may show itself years down the road.  As the compressed wood over time exerts lateral pressure, this becomes revealed over time by fissures in the table itself.  Saddle cracks, bout cracks, seam separations and bass bar cracks tend to be the result.

H.S. Wake in his book of violin making in the 1970's noted that the best way to join the table seam (and he gave no explanation why it is important if my memory serves me well) is without a clamp.  Applying this idea I have found the fewest problems, and in reality the finest quality tables are produced, if  after the edges are perfectly dressed, the two halves should simply be glued and placed together and allowed to dry over night.  One half is held in a vise.  This face is then leveled in all directions.  Glue is applied to each half of the table seam edge and the upper half is simply laid on the lower one that is held in the vise.  No force is applied.  The shop light is turned off, and I go and eat my dinner.

The absence of assorted table cracks in high quality instruments such as many of the extant Strads, suggest this to be the method used by ancient makers.  The table without a clamped seam is just more relaxed and carries no residual stress.

It took me a while to catch on to that one, but once I did, alot of construction problems were resolved in my own work.

The second is a method that was used by many makers of antiquity and today is an object of ridicule  by most of the technical and engineering half of society.  Not many makers do it anymore because of this scorn.

The practice to which I refer is that of cross-hatching or scoring the edges of the table seam before applying glue.

In case the reader of this post is having difficulty following my report, (and unless he is very familiar with the art of violin construction, he might be having difficulty) please note the following.  Violin tops as a rule, are made of two boards glued together.  Edge to edge.  They essentially are the counterpart to two-piece backs.  The edges as they are prepared are smoothed, before glue is applied, as much as possible until an ablolute air-tight fit is produced.

In antiquity, many makers would, before applying glue, take a knife and make dozens if not hundreds of little diagonal cuts directly into the surface of the edges of the boards.  This is sometimes called cross-hatching.

The modernists laugh at this process as demonstrating how little the ancient craftsmen understood proper adhesive techniques.  'The tighter the fit, the better the joint is' has been demonstrated scientifically. 

I must admit I was swayed by this camp for quite a while.

I think now,however, the ancients' idea is superior, and MUCH superior to the smooth surface modern approach. Here is why.

The premise is wrong of the modern skeptics that ancient makers believed the scratches or cuts in the surface would make the glue stick better.  Modern skeptics have no clue to what they were thinking. This is simply because all of those makers are gone and we have no idea WHAT they were observing.

My observation is this.  If you examine a failed glue joint under magnification, you will find that the glue always has a fine layer of spruce fiber still embedded in the glue.  This means that even though the glue joint failed, it did so by peeling away a fine layer of wood.  This is much like peeling a banana.

Imagine, though, this same banana.  Instead of peeling it, we cut straight into the peel with a sharp knife, say every 1/4 inch.  Then as we tried to peel it, the peel, when it reached a cut, would terminate and never allow us to peel the banana skin off.  The cuts in the edge of the table appear to function the same way.  If one area has a tendency to separate, as it moves the length of the joint it soon reaches a cut in the wood fiber, and the peeling process is terminated.

This, again, is a superior method that more than likely was developed by the ancients through trial and error.

But it works.  And apparently, very well.

Sorry about the length of the article.  Hope you aren't that tired.  I know I am!

Best wishes

Thanks

The fitting of the bass bar to the top also can create problems.

The bar runs basically the length of the fiddle under the bass side of the bridge.  Generally, it can be found directly under the G string and nore or less follows the angle of the G string from nut to bridge.

The bass bar used today is larger than on instruments of antiquity as the bar was modernized to larger proportions to accomodate the increased neck angle.  Most older instruments have "aftermarket" bass bars, therefore.

The bar should be cut to touch the table in all places, similar to the method for joining the table seam.  This means, that without clamping, the bar should rest in place with no light visible between it and the top.

The bar needs to be LIGHTLY clamped only so that it maintains its location, NOT to force it to compliance, that is, clamped in such a way to compensate for poor fit.

Also, the practice of "springing the bar", that is, intentionally cutting the bar with an increasing gap to introduce a "synthetic" spring constant to the table appears to create more problems than it addresses.  The same tonal results can be achieved by "relaxing" the bar, that is, fitting it with little clamping pressure and then thinning the bar to remove mass more than one would if the bar had been "spring-fitted".  Because spring constant is only relevant to mass, decreasing the mass of the bar has the same effect on tone as increasing the spring constant.

With a "relaxed" bass bar, the stored compression exerts no excessive force because no stored compression exists in this relaxed state.  My observation is that "springing the bar" can contribute to fissures due to the shear force it introduces.

The bass bar, when installed correctly for the table thickness, arching, and back graduation, has more effect on tonal outcome, for good or bad, than any other component to the fiddle.  Bar none (no pun intended!).  There is no standard curve to the bar to be cut, but each bar is best done it it is cut uniquely to each fiddle.  Many tonal problems can be fixed by simply opening the fiddle and adjusting the curve and/or thickness of the existing bar. 

One other note, There is no evidence that bass bars wear out as many have suggested.  Therefore, if the fiddle sounds good, there is no need to change out the bar.

A fiddler can keep playing it as is until he is too tired to pick it up!

Best wishes