Customer Reviews

Useful Measurements for Violin Makers: A Reference For Shop Use

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Somehow, when I was an apprentice, I didn't pay nearly enough attention to standard setup. For years, I've done penitence for my folly by painstakingly collecting measurements from any authoritative source I could find. With some skepticism, I bought this booklet to enhance my collection. On balance, I'm glad I did.

Strobel's data jibes quite well with what's taught at the Mittenwald school, and what I've learned from personal observation and such sources as Sacconi, Moeckel, the Hill books, and many VSA presentations. It's nice to have it all in one place and the author is free of any odd theories and strikes a sound, reasonable tone throughout. Measurements (in mm) are often given as ranges reflecting accepted practice, rather than a single number, as it should be.

Now the caveats: For a shop reference, this book is shockingly disorganized. The whole thing has a hobbyhorsiscal do-it-yourself quality, more like a chat with the author and a couple of handouts than a book. You really have to dig to find its nuggets of wisdom, which consist, primarily, of two detailed tables of standard measurements for violin, viola, and cello, and two detailed scale drawings of violin and cello setup. You will also find full-size bridge-curve templates, a reasonable discussion of bridge, bass bar, and sound post fitting, and some hints on eliminating cello wolf tones.

This material, if collected together, would occupy about nine pages. The rest of the book's 47 folios are filled with what I can only describe as junk, including egregious clip art, cartoons, portraits of Paganini, lists of maker's measuring tools (steel tape!), a table of the frequencies of standard pitches, a 200-word French-German-Italian-English dictionary of luthier's terms, a weak bibliography, and some exceedingly thin information about various historical instruments. Why did the author give us a full page of Ingres' often-reproduced Paganini portrait while cramming both of his valuable setup diagrams into a miserable half page?

Overall, you can't go wrong for the price, and you might just need to know in a pinch, say, the saddle height for a cello (12.5 mm). But I hope that the author, who seems to have at least eight books to his credit, would consider hiring an editor for his next venture.

This little book is worth its weight in gold. It contains every measurement necessary for the correct setting up of instruments. It is an indispensable tool in my workshop. Definitely well worth the money.

This is a great book if you work on stringed instruments, from serious repairs to fixing up eBay finds. Even includes measurements for fractional sizes, so you can set up those tiny violins for all the Suzuki students.

Along with "Violin Making" and "Cello Making" this book is a needed instruction manual for those who work to repair string instruments. NOT FOR BEGINNERS, one must have knowledge of woodworking as well as basic construction of string instruments. The series has many different books to choose from but this is a definite one needed for your reference library.

Henry Strobel's books are all useful for the violin maker and restorer and this book is no exception. It provides measurements of "standard" instruments of the violin family as well as other sizes, such as 3/4 & 1/2. The Template patterns are well drawn and suitable for making a set of templates from, the most useful perhaps being the smaller sizes which are less readily available commercially. There are notes regarding the bass bar, sound post and other subjects which will be useful to the repairer. There is some discussion of the wider bowed string instrument family. This is basically a workshop reference manual which most makers and repairers will wish to keep handy but never try to force any instrument into the measurments given, always take reference books as a guide not as the answer to every case.

I got this for my husband since he does woodworking and I play violin. He wanted to see what the measurement were and how about getting a template for him to create a custom violin for me. we are still going over the violin making information, but its just full of information!!

Does provide useful measurements, but was not really useful to me in the work I was doing. It has precise but narrow application and is for a person who produces violins- who already has/understands all other information regarding violin making. So, it is aptly titled, but I had hoped it would have a little more general information. I did not expect a comprehensive how-to, but would have liked a little more information on how the measurements are determined, drawn up, etc. I am more responsive to things presented visually rather than only numerically. My rating of it is based more on my expectation and experience of it than on its ultimate value as a source.

This manuscript is very well written. I found that it contained a considerable amount of usefull data. I have purchased three of Mr Strobel's books and there is some overlap of data but they all contain information that helps clarify the secrets of the art of violin construction. Highly Recommended for aspiring Luthers.

Larry Kistler GV - AZ