Jay Haide Balestrieri Violin Review

What a superb violin!

I had never been able to get a decent violin before. First I had to suffer the poverty of youth, then the poverty of college, then the poverty of the Peace Corps and entry level jobs and the recessions brought on by Capitalism’s healthy corrections (thank God that Capitalism can remain healthy, even it it takes throwing half of us out of work for it to stay that way), then the poverty of marriage and the poverty of bringing up a little family, then the poverty of divorce. Poverty, poverty, poverty. The best I was able to do, from time to time was buy the most affordable entry level violins. Hey, a cheap violin is infinitely better than no violin at all … unless, of course, you ask the neighbors.

Anyway, as the years progressed, I had been doing a lot of keyboard work, and filling out my experience with guitars and bass guitars, and then remembered my original and ancient love for violins. I guess I had shied away from getting back to violins… it had practically broke my heart when decades ago a young and pretty wife had put it to a practical choice, her or my cheap violin. I told myself I didn’t need it… the violin, not the pretty wife… and must have rather convinced myself. Violins became too sad a subject for me to easily think about. But eventually Time heals such old wounds, and so one day while I was scanning the market for a feasible electric violin purchase, I got another cheapie acoustic entry level violin to tide me over for a spell – a Mathias Thoma Model 30.

As for the Electric, I eventually choose to get the NS Design WAV4 Electric Violin from Johnson Strings, and while I was tying up that purchase, and ordering little accessory knickknacks, I asked if they had any mid-level decent violins at an affordable price. And then I described the tone I wanted.

Now, they have a vocabulary for violin tones, and it takes a while to totally grasp it and I still don’t know whether I entirely have a hold on it, but “bright” and “brilliant” mean shrill or strident, that is carrying a lot of high frequency components even on the lower strings. “Dark” means the tones stay close to their fundamentals with low harmonic content. “Rich”… well, I’m confused about what that might mean.

Anyway, they had me speak to their Sales Manager, Mr. Mathew Fritz, and simply to alley any misunderstandings, I described how I set up my electric guitars, electric bass guitars, and now even my electric violin, and asked him if he had an acoustic violin that would come naturally that way. You see, what I do is turn the bass way up and the trebles way down – I hate buzzy high frequency components and like the tones to be round and clean, full of their own body and not borrowing from the higher registers of harmonic distortion. As my father used to say, “treble” is another word for “tinny”.

He told me that what I wanted was a “dark” violin, and the darkest violin he had in my price range was a Jay Haide a l'ancienne Balestrieri Model. I was told that I was not the only violin player in the world to express a desire for The Dark Side. While most the World flocks to some derivative or another of the Stradivarius violins, their particular ‘brightness’ puts off a sizeable minority. Now, I had been thinking in my ignorance that there was either the Stradivaris or the Guarneris, the Guarneri being purportedly “darker” than the Stradivari. But apparently a generation or two after Stradivar and Guarneri had their glory days there were violin makers who went into the business of adding extra emphasis to what the players of their own day considered the separate virtues of the two great rivals. Well, Belestreri stepped forward and proclaimed that if people wanted Dark, well, he could deliver Dark like nobody else ever before him. So it was that Mr. Fritz suggested, in so many words, that if I were not to go just half way, merely in the shadows of darkness, but wished to totally plunge into the most dismal gradations of somberness, then I should have to get a Belesteri Model.

Oh, and then I told him that there would be an important proviso – I would be using steel strings. I tried various brands of Synthetic Core Strings, but what they all have in common is aluminum windings. Well, aluminum is the most fragile substance on earth and it simply doesn’t last. Go online and search up ‘unraveling violin A strings’ and see how many hits you get. The Forum Discussions almost entirely blame the players. All these strings are failing but somehow it is not the fault of the string. The most cogent advice I found was that if one simply had to have the Synthetic Core String Sound and hope to have the strings last more than a few practice sessions (yes! I had synthetic strings that did not last even for a single week!), then one would have to play one’s violin “as though it were encrusted with butterfly wings”. Now, that’s wonderful advice for delicate little girls and too-soft little boys, but for a salty old man who sometimes likes to have a drink or two before playing along with The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” (still the best violin solo ever in Rock and Roll history), such advice is useless, except for sending one off to find an alternative to Aluminum Wound Synthetic Core Violin Strings.

Well, online rumor had it that the mellowest of all the steel strings was the Thomastik Superflexibles, which are a braided steel core wound in chrome-steel. It was either that or D’Addario Helicores… so I flipped a coin. The Superflexibles are fine… although I’ve found that the G string will sound a bit buzzy on its first practice session, but the next day it will sing an “OOOO” for you just fine.

Anyway, Mr. Mathew Fritz allowed that given a naturally brighter string than most synthetics, the Jay Haide Balesteri was the best suited for dealing with it… that not all of the Balesteri’s natural darkness could possibly be washed out by a marginally brighter string, especially allowing that the Thomastik Superflexible was considered widely to be the mellowest of its steel string genre.

Oh, and Mr. Fritz pointed out that the Jay Haide Violins were wonderful values for the money; that young professionals were getting pit work and studio work in New York with them, ostensibly passing them off as much better healed instruments.

You know, after talking with Mr. Fritz of Johnson Strings, I wondered that he had not recommended one of the Chinese Shopmade Instruments , but a quick search online corrected me in that regards. The Jay Haide violins are made in China. This a good thing. A lot of nice things are said of the woods available in China. Now, it is also said that the Chinese have been a bit impatient with their curing and drying, but this is also one of the contributing factors for the affordability of Chinese Violins. The important thing to remember is that a Chinese Violin will get significantly better in just a few years… even a few months…, as it reaches an optimum dryness. But a European Violin, as good as it is, will be as good as it gets, unless one can wait a generation or two for some incremental improvement.

Anyway, it all came to the test when my Jay Haide Balesteri Violin arrived in the mail (international shipping… I couldn’t believe how quickly it arrived, and that Johnson Strings shipping department had wasted so little time). My first impression was that the antiquing is startlingly convincing. One opens the case and sees what looks like an actual museum relic. It is really beautiful once one adjusts to all the faux-scratches and faux-fades and faux-wear’n’tear. Really the skilled blend of the reds and browns in the antiqued varnish… well, the beauty of it is transfixing. Sometimes I don’t even play… I just stare at that beautiful violin in a state of aesthetically induced ecstatic rapture. .

Oh, but was Mr. Fritz right about the sound? Did the Darkness of the Balesteri survive the steel string setup. Oh, yes, by the way, Mr. Fritz will have their shop setup the violin any way you like. So I did not have to wait to change out the strings myself… he sent it prepared just as I asked.

Well, yes, but the violin did apparently need a few days to settle in – bringing full tension to the strings and allowing the bridge and sound post to settle in. And the new Thomastik Superflexible G string always takes a day to round itself out, tone wise. Anyway, after a few days it sounded lovely. The darkness resides best in the two lower strings, but if one is careful on the bow with the A and E strings, then even these naturally shrill strings are willing to sing nice round sounding “OOOOO”s.

Oh, I did have one problem. It seems that all quality violins are sold with just one fine tuner, for the E string which is always a wire and therefore hard to tune in with just the clunky old traditional peg. The problem is, though, if one uses steel strings, then they are all virtually like wire, and peg tuning to any consistent accuracy is practically impossible, and always more time consuming than it really needs to be. So if you are going to use steel strings with your fine violin, then order three more finetuners… only $2.50 a piece. Mr. Fritz will probably even offer to have them installed during his courtesy setup.

Yes, I’ve heard that they say that Fine Tuners will dampen some of the Violin’s tone. But remember, when they talk about structure dampening tone, primarily they are talking about muffling those bright and brilliant, shrill and strident, high frequency components. Remember, Structures attenuate high frequencies while allowing low frequencies to pass. In short, the fine tuners might actually make an instrument “Darker” and if darker is what one likes, then don’t hesitate to get the fine tuners! Also I heard it said on line that sometimes the fine tuners will buzz. Well, they are designed to be slipped into the tailpieces string holes and tightened down with these round knurled nuts, so just make sure they are tightened snuggly and that will preclude them buzzing because they are loose. But, admittedly, from the engineering standpoint, little components like that might also buzz if surrounding vibrations cause them to hit their own natural resonant frequency. Well, I played my scales really hard, up and down, hitting every good note and as many of the bad one’s as I could figure on, and was not able to elicit a single aberrant ‘buzz’ from my four fine tuners.

Incidentally, the case is really nice. There is enough room even for a conventional shoulder rest.

So, in brief, I am very happy with the Jay Haide Violin, and with the entire staff at Johnson Strings – Sales, Bills and Accounting, and Shipping. It makes one appreciate how wonderful it could be to live in a Perfect World and to hope with just a few more such encouragements, that Life is perhaps beginning to become ‘fair’. Or if life again proves to be miserable and disappointing, well, at least one has a good violin to play. If one must ‘fiddle while Rome burns’, one should at least do it on a nice fiddle like the Jay Haide Balesteri.

Violin Collar (patent pending) Vs Violin Shoulder Rest

I remember some poor Reviewer complaining that the Fender FV-3 Electric Violin was so heavy that he could not hold it in place. It would not keep still and it took so much Left Hand effort to steady it, that the Hand was seriously distracted from work of actually playing the violin.

So I didn’t get the Fender FV-3. I got the NS Design WAV 4 Violin in stead.

And I found it so heavy… Well, it was the same problem.

But you can’t just toss these things in the Dust Bin, can one? So I thought and thought and thought, and an inspiration came to me. Hang the darn thing from one’s neck from a kind of collar that connects up to either the Shoulder Rest mount, or from the Bridge Nut Mount, as on a standard acoustic Violin. You see, the Center of Gravity of an Electric Violin, and even a standard acoustic violin is very far down, close to the chin rest. If all that weight is hanging from one’s neck, on a short chocker collar, then there is little weight left to bother one’s left hand.

After a few weeks of trying various forms of collar and fasteners (cotton rope and key rings and spring loaded clips) I got it about right for both my electric and my ordinary violins. I really don’t even have to use the chin rests anymore. Keeping the shoulder rest does help orientate the violin correctly. And I can play and play and play and never have to worry about adjusting the violin’s position.

Oh, and the bonus of using a collar… one does not need to put the violin down all the time… to rosin one’s bow or select new music or whatever. One simply lets go and the relatively small violins simply drop down on the chest unobtrusively. If one is a Bar Room Musician, then one no longer has to worry about one of the clients grabbing your violin and racing out the door with it.

Oh, I was told to patent the thing, so, sure, I’ll patent it. But if anybody just wants to make one at home, or put together something of a dog collar to do the same thing, feel free. I just don’t want to see them for sale anywhere unless it is I doing the selling.

Learning Music The Easy… The Right Way

Years ago there was this thing called the Suzuki Method, it came out of Japan after the War … the whole idea of it was that it was supposed to be easier for little kids to learn music, because it’s easier for little kids to learn language. Hand a little kid a fiddle and tell him to play with it, while immersing him in an environment rife with music and other musicians, and pretty soon the little kid would be carrying a tune like other little kids carry the mumps or the measles.

Unfortunately the foundational premise of the Suzuki Method is so discouraging for anybody over the age of about 4 years old when that Language Advantage parallel levels off and disappears, and, besides, its wrong!

While adults and older children may have a tough enough time when it comes to learning the proper conjugation of French Verbs, when a catchy tune comes over the radio, nobody has any trouble remembering how to hum it exactly, hours or even days afterward. Mr. Suzuki might have been bright enough to know that Catchy Tunes cling to the mind a lot better than those devilish Foreign Languages. Maybe he was too dazed by the War, or just grateful he could come up with some reasonably credible justification for his Big Moneymaking Scheme. Well, we all have to eat, don’t we. But its left to other people to clean up after such Intellectual Sloppiness.

So, yes, Music is different. Having heard a song once, People, even those older than 4 years old, stroll down the street skipping to its beat and “la la la-ing” it. And everyone else who has heard it knows the song. People get music right… often the very first time they try. Yes, and as Suzuki might have predicted, often these adults and older children don’t get the language of the songs quite right. While they get the melody just fine, as, for instance, when they sing a new song in the shower shower, the words are almost always not quite correct… but the substitutes and faux-rhymes are often as good as the real words… or even sometimes better. As far as words and Modern Music are concerned, it is not as though the bar is set so very high.

You know, playing tunes on a musical instrument is almost just as easy as singing in the shower or humming while subtly skipping down the street. One only needs to get acquainted with the instrument one plans on playing. And that is not really as difficult as the Professional Musician Culture makes it out to be. After all, ‘They’ already know we think they are lazy, and they don’t wish us to find out that what they do for a living is easy as well. So they do what most professions do – they pretend that what they do is difficult so they don’t have to apologize for all the money they take away for doing it. Well… not that 99% of professional musicians don’t live in the most abject poverty… but its always the top 1% that controls the Public Relations, is it not? The Voice of One Madonna drowns out the lamentations of a million low paid songsters who crowd the slums like so many pathetic rats… rats who can whistle happy tunes and tap their little paws in time…

Here is an illustration of just how easily music comes to us, even as adults. In Germany there was this policeman who had been shot in the throat in the line of duty. It destroyed his vocal cords. Since it was not in America, it was decided that no public expense would be spared to rehabilitate the man and bring him back his speech somehow. So they got him this Sound Generator Box with a touch sensitive activation screen. It was programmed to operate like a kind of palate – consonants could be formed and then tones could be modulated like the various vowel sounds and then more consonants… you know, like real words and real language. At first they were going to make it monotonic, as a pitch control would have added another complication to an already complicated little piece of equipment. In other countries they may have thought that a common man would have trouble working through so many intricacies and variables, but remember that this was in Germany where they rather take high levels of common intelligence for granted, and so they heaped on the tonal pitch control, supposing it could be used to make the ‘voice’ more natural with just a dash of sing-songiness, once the man got used to the controls and didn’t overdo it. Well, long story short, after only a few months the man was not only able to form intelligible and surprisingly natural sounding speech… German even!... using the fingers of just one hand, but he was able to “sing” with it, and then just by using various vowels and tones on the little box he was able to “play” it, mimicking various musical instruments!

Now, violins, pianos, guitars… aren’t they about like the same thing, or even easier? Remember, we only have to get familiar with the things and how they work. And if we commit a little time everyday, its bound to become easy. Just think about it. Everyday, the same old strings. Everyday, the same old notes. It is not a moving target. Nothing moves. Nothing ever changes. Of course one would get the hang of it.
Nowadays I don’t even bother taking the dust cover off my keyboard… after you hit the first key… blind… you got your orientation and your hands know where all the other keys are. On guitar and violin, while I still watch the pick or bow to keep them on the straight and narrow… from inadvertently dinging the next string over, the finger board fingers are free to roam where they want… they know their landscape perfectly well.

So it is that the Relationship between the Keys or the Strings never Change. Learning it doesn’t take long and once you know it, you know it forever.

So what is stopping everybody? Well, the Music Teachers! Let me illustrate with a story. I remember when I was a kid. My parents got my older brother a guitar, and sent him to a music teacher for an official music lesson. He came home with a book. His first Music Book. Apparently Music was to be treated like some kind of an intellectual endeavor. In his first week he was supposed to learn the chords for the song “Red River Valley”. What this means in practical terms was that in his first week he was expected to master the coordination of all six strings of a guitar with one stroke of a pick. And when he learned “Red River Valley”, they would teach him a new song. Apparently the idea was to learn every song in the Universe, one at a time, a week at a time. Well, the practices must have been hateful! All he was doing was straining to put his fingers in the correct mechanically pre-determined positions to fill out these mysterious chords, which, if he did it correctly, would mechanically result in the sounds of the correct song coming out. Not the least bit of art in the entire thing. It was all rote memorization and finger bending races with a metronome.

But the Music Teacher could show mommy and daddy that after just one week Little Johnny was already playing a song. What a Success! Music done like its some kind of a trick. Shortcutting the process so badly that sometimes these ‘musicians never really learn the strings. They tend to fall back on their mechanics… the chords they know instead of the chords they are hearing.

But it’s not like that everywhere. In the South, in those Blue Hills of Kentucky and thereabouts, they would get a kid a Thing with a mop handle with one string running from the top on down to a fastening in the bottom of a bucket – the Ol’ One String Bass. They’d turn on the radio and tell Little Johnny to play along. “Boing, ka-boing, ka-boing boing boing”. No further instructions required… well, not until little Johnny mastered the One String and wanted to add a second string or even a third string, and then Mom and Dad or Cousin or Uncle Bob would sometimes get involved… “Johnny, do you want 2 full tune steps between strings, like a bass guitar, or 3 tune steps like a big ol’ fiddle bass?” Well, most ‘Johnnies’ try both ways. So we have thousands of these ‘Little Johnnies’ out in Them Hills that in their first few months of practice learn how to move comfortably between the World of Violins and Guitars. Hopefully the parents time it all correctly so that by the time their Little Johnny starts to rig his Ol’ One String into being a 4 or 5 or even 6 “stringer”… replacing the Mop handle with a shaved down 2X4, Christmas will arrive so that Johnny can be presented with his first ‘real’ guitar or fiddle… which, given a few minutes to adjust to the new feel, he would already be able to play half as well as Elvis, who probably learned the same way. Well, perhaps not the chords to “Red River Valley”, but he would be able to jump in and play the songs on the radio, just as he had with his Ol’ One String Bass.

At first he would move very quickly between strings, covering all the necessary harmonic blends and tones within the song, and then with time he will get lazy like everybody else and simply hold down all the appropriate strings at once in their necessary positions – making Chords… but he won’t have to ask anybody what they are or should be or what to call them. He will simply just know them by intimate acquaintance. Of course, out in the Hills people ‘know’ chords and teach each other chords, but they aren’t held back by them. They can all jump right into new songs, and the chords might be some very fast finger-picking at first, but by the end of the song the right chords will be strumming away. Its not so much that they know the chords as that they know the Neck of their Guitars.

And, really, adults in the Civilized World could learn Music in about much the same way, and just about as quickly… if they were willing to put in as much time as Little Johnny. It’s just embarrassing for adults to start off learning new things if it can be held up to public ridicule. So just find a room with a lockable door and a musical instrument that can play into headphones, and you’re set. People will simply think you’re in there looking at Porn, which by Today’s standards isn’t nearly as embarrassing as learning to play a musical instrument.

Well, technically, to do what Little Johnny does… to play along with the Radio or the Stereo or whatever, but secretly, you’ll need a two channel mixer… to hear both the Song and the instrument you are using to play along with it.

I really recommend the Violin as a first instrument. Pianos have discreet keys and guitars have those discreet frets. When given these discreet units, the Intellectual part of our Minds try to learn them intellectually. The Left Brain tries to co-opt a Right Brain activity. What keys are which notes? What frets are which notes? One is full of questions. But the violin, while having four discreet strings, which is perfectly obvious, has no frets. A beginning Musician will simply have to squirm around on the strings and find the note he is looking for. Yes, for a second or two it can be very discouraging, but then when one lands on the exact right note, and hears the perfect harmonization between target song and what one is playing on one’s own Instrument, then it is a virtual moment of bliss from heaven.

But don’t get ahead of yourself. Remember the Ol’ One String Bass … start with just one string. With a violin, start at the low end, or the high end, but pick an end, and just see what you can do with just that one string. You know, there are actually a lot of possible notes in each one of the violin strings, from the top of the neck at the nut to as far down the neck toward the bridge as one can reach on the fingerboard… at least the match of most people’s singing voice range. You see, the way Strings work is that from the Top to the exact middle of the String is one full octave, but then the next higher octave takes only half that same distance, the next octave just half of that half of a distance – the notes get closer together as you come down the neck, and it gives each string a heck of a lot of range. You know, Little Johnny really was able to play songs on that One String thing. One string was plenty at the beginning, but it was also enough.

No one will have to tell you when you can go to the next string. You will get lazy about moving all the way up or down on the string to get to a note you want and you will figure it’s just easier to reach across to the next string where the desired note is situated closer… more conveniently. You see, stringed instruments have more than one string not to make it harder to play, but to make it easier… once you know the relationship between strings.

One of the best exercises for after you have mastered One String Playing, is to never play a repeating note twice in a row on the same string. On guitars where the strings are only two full steps apart… 5 frets which include those Sharp and Flat half tones… it is actually quite easy to play the same note on three adjacent strings – boing, boing, boing… going diagonally across the fingerboard. Violins with their 3 full steps between strings, well, the same note is a bit more of a reach between strings, so there it is sufficient to play the same note from one string to the next… the third string might be a bit of a reach. Anyway, once your Hand knows this string to string relationship, all else quite easily follows, and moving between strings will come quite as naturally as just playing just one string… only easier.

Keyboards are in fact easier than string instruments in their own way… and harder. One can learn the Octave Spacing of a keyboard within minutes, but the very ease of being able to beat on so many keys at once, well, introduces the possibility for so much error. Easy to play, easy to get wrong. And then with the sharps and flats … those annoying Black Keys… arranged on a different plane and level from the Full Note White keys… it throws a non-linear relationship into the whole thing and makes it far more difficult than it really should be – than if they had simply put all the notes in the same row and on the same level. But, still, the keys never move, and are the same from day to day, and so after a while one eventually gets used to the arrangement.

Keyboards are not given to the “One String Bass” mode of learning, but one can start in a comparatively easy fashion by using far fewer than all ten fingers. I would have suggested starting with the Index Fingers of both hands, except that this will lead you to a preference for the White Keys, so start your first keyboard exercises using Thumbs and Index Fingers – the Thumbs covering the White Keys and the Index Fingers held in reserve for when your Hand senses that one of the Black Sharp or Flat Keys would seem to be more appropriate… at first hit both the White Key and the Black Keys close above, and sound them out for which is best. Start Practice with one hand, giving the Ear its full attention, then switching to the other hand, and then finishing your songs with both hands, letting your Ear get used to the blend of sounds. With enough practice, thumb and forefingers only, your hands will eventually sort through the whole full note, sharp note and flat note thing – the White and Black Keys and their different levels. And just like on guitar or violin where you tried to limit yourself to just one string, after a while it will become impossible to keep the other fingers from joining in on the keyboard. But try not to rush it. Let it happen naturally. As you stretch into larger chords and more dashing speeds and broader riffs, you might exceed your present capacities and get a jarring off-note or two, as is to be expected. Just remember, though, if it gets too bad, you may be adding too much at time. So go back and retrench with your basics. Listen to the left hand. Listen to the right hand. Use fewer fingers and make sure you are hitting the basic chord outlines. Once the basics are solid, then you can add all the pretty details and flesh out the songs.


The ultimate trick is to remember that Music is done with the Right Side of your brain, while the Left Side of your brain is busy thinking of method and rules and theory and all of that. Now, as you begin Practice, it is difficult to simply turn off the Left Side of the Brain, which, really, more often than not, interferes far more than it contributes. What you need to do is tire the Left Side of your brain out… practice until you notice that your Left Side Brain is no longer really paying attention… that you are consciously thinking about other things, all the while the Right Side of the Brain continues to play. This is when the real work is being done. Typically after an hour of practice even the most tenacious Left Side of the Brain is fatigued beyond caring, and the Right Side of the Brain is allowed to learn … and play… unmolested. So try not to cut your practices short. If your mind begins to wonder, CONTINUE, BECAUSE THAT IS A GOOD THING! This is when the magic of new skills develop, when you will see and hear your hands do things that you really didn’t have to teach them. Believe me, you will never have to just sit around and think up neat things to do you’re your musical instrument. All that stuff comes during the long practices. Manna from heaven. You just find yourself, tired, distracted, doing new and wonderful things. And they don’t go away. On the next nights practice, they will be their waiting like you had been doing it for the last 20 years.

Well, yes, I may need to clarify something… the Left Brain can sometimes be a little bit helpful. It’s the Left Side of the Brain that suggests volume changes, and adjustments to the knobs and petals. When a string falls seriously out of tune, it’s the Left Brain that yells “ouch!” (the Right Brain would just keep playing and find new frets or different violin ‘positions’ to compensate for how the string jumped out of tune… but the Left Brain notices and yells “Whew! That’s Bu Shi”. Oh, “Bu Shi” is Mandarin for Not Is and other approximate concepts. I think that is where the American’s got their colorful colloquialism from, which really has nothing to do with boy cows and feces). Or matters of Taste. The Left Brain is the Judge of all that. One will be jazzing along hard on what should be a Sentimental Ballad and the Left Brain will be drawn back to attention and remark that it would all sound much better with deeper Feeling and less effing around. So the Left Brain does have its place. But 99% of the work of learning to play a Musical Instrument is accomplished by the Right Brain – the seemingly effortless way one dances one’s fingers over the Keys or the Strings… that is no Intellectual Left Brain accomplishment. If it were, then Little Johnny, no intellectual giant by any stretch, would not be quite so good at it or enjoy it quite so much.

Oh and a final word about Level of Accomplishment, and Pleasure in Playing. You know, I’m pretty sure that there is no cap on the enjoyments one realizes while achieving the triumphs that are had at one’s present level of ability. Happiness is Happiness. The King conquering the World is really no happier than the Cat given its tuna dinner. Getting better and better does not make one happier with one’s playing. Indeed, the most bored musicians are those who have hit a plateau at the highest level of accomplishment. I remember a story about a German Composer and Piano Player who was so sad about leveling off at Perfection, that he designed a “Finger Spreader” to stretch the span of his grip so he could hit slightly wider chords. It gave him arthritis and destroyed his ability to play at all. So I guess the enjoyments of Music are a lot like enjoying the Trip and the Scenery along the way, as there will never be any Final Ecstasy at some Perfect Destination. The Beatles played the Metropolitan Opera, the Mecca of all Stage Musicians, symbolizing having arrived at the top of the Masters of their Craft. And what a poor pathetic lot of miserable dogs they turned out to be. And if that doesn’t convince you, we can talk about Michael Jackson…

Now, of course, where other people are concerned, it is far happier to be Accomplished. Especially in the sense that if one is not completely Accomplished, and according to every taste and preference, then there will be people out there screaming that ‘You Suck!’. But here we are moving away from Pleasure and entering the considerations of Work and Professionalism – how one is auctioning one’s self off to the Public. Actually, it is probably best to keep Music as a pure and private Pleasure, and where Work and Professionalism is involved, to simply keep one’s Day Job. Of course, with the intense Competition of Global Capitalism side-lining more and more of us, downsizing away thousands of ‘Day Jobs’ every day, we may have little choice but to dance for our dinners… or to play for those who do dance.

Oh, and I just had a thought while reading some criticisms of the Suzuki Method. People complained that the very young children were not being terribly creative… playing what they heard and not doing a heck of a lot of change-ups. Well, duh. People need to realize that the Conceptual Mind does not even turn on until we are about 8 years old. Indeed, one of the things that make Language Acquisition so difficult after that age is suddenly so much more is expected of a Language. Conceptualization, so difficult even while Thinking in one’s Mother Tongue, has to struggle with the nuance of unfamiliar words. So it is similarly with Musical Conceptualizations… making up new songs, or new riffs and arrangements for old songs.

I’ve heard of a great many autistic musicians who can play what they hear but can never think of anything new or different. That’s sad. Since so much in Today’s Music can stand improvement. After all, look at the Process for turning out Today’s Music. Everything is rushed post-haste through the Studios because to the Producers its just a Business and their Target Audience is really not very selective anyway. Everything hits the Market being barely good enough to please the Standards of an Industry where the standards fall ever lower each year. So of course one can play music like that and improve upon it. Just note the differences between the original Beatles “With a Little Help From Your Friends” and Joe Cocker’s version To Joe the song was familiar and he probably dabbled with it long enough to get some good ideas for it. He took longer than 5 minutes before rushing it through the studio which is how it sounds performed by the Beatles. Hmmm, Joe Cocker also did a good job with Randy Newman’s “I think it is Going to Rain”. Just listening to Randy Newman’s original, one would think that the song held no promise at all. Oh, and during the Sixties and Seventies there was practically an Industry all to itself dedicated to bringing out Laura Niro songs with more polish than the originals.

So, yes, playing along with Music is often more than just playing what one hears being played. It is also about one’s Imagination sometimes taking over and playing what SHOULD HAVE BEEN played. For instance, after 30 years of playing it, I think I have a better piano solo in “Home Again” than Carole King… or just more elaborate. That is one Album nobody has ever been able to improve upon… Carole King’s “Tapestry”. That girl came into the Studio with her guns loaded…

More later…

Mellow Out that Electric Violin

Fender FV3
NS Design Electric Violin

One of the most blatant problems with electric violins is that there is only one piezoelectric pickup in the bridge, and the same equalization controls have to apply to all of the strings, the low strings and the high strings. That means that one cannot really even out those annoying high frequency components on the low strings, the G and D strings, without also shutting down the high strings where the high frequency components rightfully belong.

I had arrived at a kind of a sound stage compromise where I had been turning up the base and dumping the medium and high controls to almost nothing, and enough of the high strings would get through while attenuating most of the buzzy high frequency components on the low strings. But the fix was not perfect.

Then it occurred to me that one has more than electronics to fiddle with, excuse the expression. One can deal with the physical properties of the violin. I was thinking of how when neighbors are playing their music too loud, mostly it is the Bass that gets through the wall. The only time one hears a lot of high notes is when someone hits an iron railing and one hears the complete full bandwidth twang twang through the iron. So it is that hard materials will pass all frequencies, even the high frequencies, but if one adds less hard materials, such as plasterboard and insulation, then the high frequencies are attenuated and mostly the low notes get through.

Hmmmm. So I thought of the solid piezoelectric bridges on most electric violins. Solid little rocks, really. Why not introduce a softer porous more resilient material between the strings and the solid bridge – the low notes will get through and the high buzzy frequencies will be attenuated.

So I found an old bicycle inner-tube and cut a square that I could drape over the bridge and tie in place with a slip-knotted string. I have an NS Design WAV 4, and the bridge is set a bit low to begin with, so the extra bit of height added to the bridge with this dampening padding only helped, as it is easier to modulate the strings if they are not entirely flat down on the finger board.

Yes, it worked. The low notes are a lot cleaner, far less buzzy, and I really didn’t notice any difference with the high strings. The Electric Violin is a great more civilized now.

Review NS Design WAV 4 Violin

Review NS Design WAV 4 Violin

Overall this is going to be a favorable Review; however, I certainly have a few reservations and then some positive advice.

Firstly, if you are in love with the sound of an acoustic violin… even a cheap basic student violin with steel strings… then the WAV 4, straight out of the box will terrify you with its heavy coarse raw electrical sound. But since the WAV 4 is ‘passive’, that is, it doesn’t have a built-in preamplifier and some elaborate onboard set of equalizers and effects switches and knobs, then you will almost certainly have to get or already have some kind of an pre-amp and amplification system. Depending on the controls on your amplifier/preamplifier, you might be able to minimize a great deal of that buzzy electronic sound character of the WAV 4.

My own setup may be unnecessarily complicated. You see, I use the same Input Cord for everything I play – a couple of electric guitars, an electric bass, and now the electric Violin. Changing instruments just takes resetting a few dials. I use a Bass Amplifier as my Preamp Stage, bringing the signal out from the Headphone Jack. Then it goes into a Alesis Nanoverb 16 Bit Digital Effects Unit, and then goes through a Peavey PV6 Mixer with LO Med and Hi adjusts on the channel. The Final Stage is runs to my headphones. I could probably pull the Bass Amp out of the setup and let the Alesis Digital Effects Processor handle the job of being a preamp, but sometimes it is good to leave well enough alone.

It turns out that the WAV 4 Violin likes about the same settings as my Bass Guitar, and for about the same reason. The worse Electronic Sound comes from high frequency components riding on the sound from the lowest strings. Turning the Treble of the WAV 4 all the way down brings out a fairly natural sound on the A and E Strings (the two highest strings on a violin), but so much high frequency stuff still rides on the G and D strings that one hardly suspects that these are supposed to be low notes. So on my first stage of amplification going through the bass amplifier, I turn down the Medium and the High filters and set up the Low knob to pass more Low than anything else, and I do the same with the Mixer Controls. Yes, it does knock some of the final volume off of the high strings, but plenty of that A and E high pitch gets through, so it is not really a problem. Besides, just a touch of Treble on the WAV 4 brings back plenty of A and E String volume.

It turns out that the rather affordable Alesis Nanoverb Effects Processor (I think I got it for a bit more than a hundred dollars) is just the right thing to have if you actually LIKE electric violin sound. I was able to adjust it for some really nice professional sounding effects – chorus with echo and all of that. But one can dial down these effects so they are barely noticeable while still being a bit helpful. For instance, a slight bit of ‘chorus’, whether linear or non-linear, helps to fill in the Low Strings, giving some of the roundness back to the sound that is robbed by the electronics

I was not able to totally drive out the electronic sound and arrive at a perfect acoustic sound, but I got satisfied enough so that I did not have to throw the whole heap into the trash can. One will never be invited to play with a chamber orchestra or with an unplugged folk music recital, so keep your real violin if you still want all of that. However, when playing with an Electric Band, one can get close enough to the acoustic sound to satisfy for violin parts in songs that are supposed to have that natural sound. It might not be a perfect fit but remember its only rock and roll.

This sound stage setup work took about 5 hours. Then I had to get used to actually playing the WAV 4 Violin. It doesn’t play like your standard violin. The Chin Rest is different, and there is that god-awful Shoulder Rest contraption, which turned out to be actually quite a diamond in the rough after I learned to deal with it (more on this below). Anyway, you can’t just stick the WAV 4 under your chin and go like its your old fiddle.

The WAV 4 is heavy. It’s a block of wood, hallowed out only as much as necessary to put in the Bridge Mounts, the String Things, and the Pickup Jack. Then the metal brackets for the Chin Rest and the Shoulder Rest are heavy enough to mount a sixteen inch cannon onto a battle ship. Given all this weight, the Shoulder Rest would need to be perfect so that one would be able to play without constantly needing to use the left hand for manually holding up and repositioning the violin, when, really, the job of the left hand should be exclusively taken up with dancing fingers upon the strings. But there was just no getting the Should Rest right… for the first several hours…

But I kept at it. The Cushion Part of the Shoulder rest is rubber foam glued on this thick curved metal blade, curved nicely on one side, but apparently shaped to go over the shoulder on the shoulder-most side, and so it guts inward. This is great if you play the violin absolutely sideways, with the violin positioned exactly over the shoulder, forcing your head around to create a permanent crick in the neck. Yeah, yeah… that is how one is supposed to play. All the Best Schools constantly reiterate that the Best Way must necessarily always be the most uncomfortable way. If what they instruct isn’t hated and resented, then it can’t possible be technically ‘correct’. However, in the Real World, a great many violin players fall away from such standards of school house perfection, and we play with the violin set more forward. Some people play the violin right under the chin, head and eyes forward. Well, for those Non-Conformists the Shoulder Rest jutting blade stabs them in the chest – giving them the punishment they so rightfully deserve! But really, that’s not what they spent their money for, is it?

I was reading on the Ned Steinberger Site (NS Design apparently stands for Ned Steinberger Design) and I saw promotions for their Custom Shoulder Rest, which is flexible. Apparently they had received hundreds of thousands of complaints regarding their standard Shoulder Rests and so they redesigned the Shoulder Rest, but they are still selling Violins with the Old ‘Stabber/Punishment’ Shoulder Rests. Anyway, I thought that my Shoulder Rest was one of the new Flexible ones (I should learn to read websites more carefully), but when I tried to bend it with my fingers, there was no give at all. So I tried to tweak it a little with a BFH (Very Big Hammer) and it snapped. Really, it was not malleable in the least. You would think it would bend a little before breaking, but, no. after five or six very sound blows – Snap! But the good news is that it is no longer stabbing me. The rubber pad glued to the bottom of the thing holds the pieces together. Anyway, I have emails out to Ned Steinberger and Johnson Strings asking about what I have to do to get one of the new Custom Shoulder Rests.

Well, even after breaking the Shoulder Rest which represented some progress in fixing the inherently flawed design, I still could not dial it in to the point where I could play the violin for longer than 20 seconds without having to stop to reposition the thing. The weight of the thing was making it inexorably slide down the chest. And constantly supporting the weight of this Battleship Violin… well, it was giving me a upper back ache and muscle fatigue in my left arm. I have to admit that I was getting a bit discouraged, but then I had this wonderful inspiration!

The Bar and Tee arrangement of the Shoulder Rest provided an excellent hook up spot for a simple strap that one could wear around one’s neck. What I did was I tied off my Scapular Cord (A Scapular is a Catholic Religious thing that just happened to hang from a thick cord I had woven from 9 strands of wool yarn – a rather nice piece of rope, really) to a length that would just barely fit over my head and I passed it through the Chin Side of the Shoulder Rest Blade and over the Fastening Knob, and now all the weight of the violin hangs from my neck on that neck strap. It worked wonderfully well! I was finally able to get in a good practice, with the violin staying put long enough to warm up on the fingering and decide that, yes, indeed, it was an actual violin I was playing. And, with the Shoulder Rest looped through the Neck Cord, one does not need to put the WAV 4 Violin down… between songs, or rosining the bow, or whatever. One simply lets go and the smallish violin simply hangs down on one’s chest, like a big jewelry pendant. If you wish to make your own neck strap, then any heavy cord or strap looped to be about 23 inches in diameter, just fitting over your head, would be suitable.

Oh, the WAV 4 Violin comes with the Bridge adjusted very low. I used those screwdriver adjusts to bring up the Bridge a bit to help with the kind of string modulation you do by wiggling your fingers on the string… if the bridge is too low, you lose a lot of that effect.

So, in summation, the WAV 4 probably sounds no more “electronic” than any of the other Electric Violins out there, and once you learn to strap the Shoulder Rest around your neck, then that horrible monstrosity of a Shoulder Rest actually becomes a positive attribute for selecting WAV 4 from amongst all of its competition. It makes me think of objections I have heard regarding Fender’s FV-3 Electric Violin – that it was overly heavy and constantly needed to be repositioned. Well, with its standard acoustic style Shoulder Rest, there’s not much that one can do about the weight – there is nothing that I can see to tie onto or hook up to in order to provide the Neck Strap relief available so easily on the WAV 4 Violin. Such is probably the case with most Electric Violins – because they are heavier than normal acoustic violins, the struggle to keep the violin stable while playing is intensified. And it is a struggle, even with normal violins. Just go search up information on regular violin shoulder support systems… obviously, people are having problems keeping their violins still enough to play upon.

Oh, and a final point on Electric Violins in general. Wow, are they quiet! I had no idea that traditional acoustic violins had such a potent magic for amplifying the sound of the strings. With the same strings strung exactly the same way over a simple piece of wood, or your typical electric violin, without any electronic amplification, the strings emit barely the slightest whisper. So, if your primary urge for buying an electric violin, is so you do not put off your neighbors, family or roommates with the volume of a regular violin, then getting an electric violin really is a good choice. The volume difference is, well, I guess a hundred to one. My headphones probably make more noise then the electric violin itself.

………………………………..
Addendum to NS Design WAV 4 Violin Review

I’ve now had the WAV 4 Violin just over a week, and it has gotten even better in my estimation. At first, you will remember, I was obsessed with how well it compared to ordinary acoustic violins, but now that seems almost beside the point. Electric Violins are, after all, electric, and while it would be an additional feather in their cap if they could sound natural, as electric they have a great many advantages over regular acoustics. For instance, one can play an Electric using a wide range of playing sensitivities – a soft light bow sound can be had while turning up the volume enough for your audience to actually here it. To be heard with an acoustic violin in any large room with the least bit of any other noise going on, one has only the option of grinding down very hard, therefore loosing the illusion of sensitivity.

Then there is the point regarding acoustical sound, that there is a wide debate over just what constitutes an acceptable acoustical sound. While to the untrained ear all acoustical violins may sound the same, to a trained ear they all sound different, and in many instances not that particularly good. Some people spend thousands of dollars trying to get a violin that sounds ‘good’ and when they get one, they start saving up for one that will sound even better. It is all quite obsessive and endless. So it was a relief for me to finally determine that the sounds being produced from the NS Design WAV 4, with the help of my Alesis Nanoverb Digital Effects Processor and Peavey PV6 Mixer and Amplifier, were, well, better. It is not so bad, is it, when we can settle for “better”.

Oh, regarding the NS Design stock Shoulder Rest, which I broke with a hammer because I thought it was a Custom ( Flexible) Shoulder Rest, well, I got an email from Johnson Strings and they will special order me a Custom Shoulder Rest for $50.00. Cool! But I could as easily keep the old one. You see, I repaired it so it is now flexible in its own right. I had looked for just the right degree of flexibility and found it in the thick plastic of a kitty litter bucket top, and sawed off a piece of it to fit across the top of the broken shoulder rest blade, and then I wound it on using some really nice tan-brown wool yarn, using just enough carpenters glue to keep the yarn from unraveling, and which dries clear. It looks like I simply added a bit of extra padding to the shoulder rest.

Oh, and this brings us to the best feature of the NS Design Electric Violin, and that is that the inverted ‘Tee’ bracket of the Shoulder Rest provides the best tie-off potential of any Violin on the market, that I know of that is. Remember how I complained of the WAV 4 being too heavy to keep stable enough to play, and I found I could pass a loop around my neck and simply hang the Violin from my neck. Well, yes, that basic idea works, and I developed it a bit further. Firstly, it is perhaps a mistake to simply pass one belt or cord around one’s neck and around the Shoulder Rest’s Tee Stem. Why? Well, unless it is kept very tight, there is the possibility that the blades of the shoulder rest might wiggle under the cord or belt, and the violin take a plunge toward the floor. Mine did, but fortunately my first Performance Discipline was that of a Juggler and my hand automatically followed the falling Violin down and snatched it up before it hit the floor. Yes, so while I was never able to fully perfect my Act of juggling 5 flaming bowling pins to “Flight of the Bumble Bee”, still, I was able to snatch up one falling violin just when it really counted.

Anyway, in my Shoulder Rest Support System, I ended up using a loop of cord. I got some 36 gauge cotton string and braided 3 strands together to make a cord about 6 feet long. Be careful to start with pieces of string about 15 to 20% longer than what you will finally need, as braiding soaks up some of the original length of the strings you use. I tied the ends of the cord together to form a loop and I pass the end of the loop around the Tee Stem of the Shoulder Rest, and then encircle my neck with the rest of the loop. No, I do not pass the loop over my head… it is far too long for that. I keep the loop doubled over when I pass it around my neck, and my original intent was to loop the other end around the Tee Stem of the Shoulder Rest from the other side after having gone around my neck. And that does work, but things get crowded there, just under the chin rest, and when it is time to undo the loops after practice, it is difficult to feel which loop end should go where, and one is caught trying to find a mirror one can work with. So I ended up finally attaching a small single loop of cord to the Tee Stem, and a Key Ring Clip to the Primary Loop. The thing can now clip on or clip off in mere seconds. I keep it fairly tight, so that the chin rest is fixed just under my chin. Oh, this is why it is an advantage to use a double loop instead of a single cord around the neck, as the double loop while it can be arranged to be tight, has twice as much inherent ‘stretch and bounciness’ as a single cord, and that makes it more comfortable and easier to work with during a long practice. And in practice, the loop holds the violin in place so well, it is really something of an afterthought whether I use the chin rest at all. You see, here is where the weight of the WAV 4 might actually be something of an asset. Most of the weight is toward the bottom of the WAV 4, about even with the bridge. Once secured around the neck, most of the weight then simply drops into the Shoulder Rest, keeping the Violin stable even despite some rather energetic playing.

Oh, about the NS Design Shoulder Rest being a wonderfully innovative design. Well, yes, especially that one can adjust the longitudinal Axis of the Violin. With most other violin designs, one is more or less stuck with a Bridge aligned horizontally, that is, parallel to the horizon – flat and level to the floor. With the Longitudinal Axis adjustability of the NS Design, one can lean the G String of the Bridge up to make it easier to come up over the top of the strings with the bow. Honestly, after a week with it, I don’t know how I had ever been able to live without it before.

Oh, I forgot to mention in my first review that I had changed out the two fat strings with Thomastik Infeld Super Flexibles, and I like them a lot. They are steel-chrome wound braided steel strings, and are known for being the mellowest of the steel strings available for violin. If you already have plenty of high frequency buzziness inherent to the violin itself, which seems to be the case with Electric Violins in general, then a mellow set of strings seems to be the way to go. The original A and E, as they sounded okay, and good enough is, after all, good enough.

Oh, the literature included with the WAV 4 mentions that it would be compatible with perlon or synthetic strings. Yes, but take my advice and stay away from the Perlons and the Synthetics. Why? Well, they are wound in aluminum. And aluminum is very brittle. Go on line and search up ‘unraveling violin strings’ and you will see it is a chronic problem with just about every brand of aluminum wound string, especially the A Strings. Then another thing about Aluminum is that it is molecularly NOT smooth. Even when you oil an aluminum wound string, one can not easily slide a finger on an aluminum string. Aluminum if ‘grabby’. The molecular surface of the aluminum simply wants to dig into the surface of your finger’s skin. That is probably why these aluminum strings are so fragile – they grip so hard and do not want to let go, while the violin player is either trying to skillfully modulate his playing with some slight wiggling back and forth, or is desperately trying to slide into the correct note while time is still left on the metronome. Well, in any case, even good players can’t make aluminum strings last very long, especially not with the vigorous playing styles that one can expect of an Electric Violin. And let us admit that sometimes sliding between notes can be GOOD SOUNDING effect, and we shouldn’t HAVE TO avoid it because the strings are too delicate or grabby to allow for it. Also, new Perlon and Synthetic Strings regularly take an entire day to stabilize their tune enough to stay in tune from one song to the next. And you have to tune them up gradually so you do not break them during installation, and they will not stay in tune or even nearly in tune, from day to day, until they had settled in for the best part of half a week. Imagine if you were on stage and broke a perlon or synthetic string. You couldn’t just wind on a new string and play, like you could with all of your steel strings and chrome steel wrapped strings.

Oh, in this regards I do like the innovative string tuners and the peg-less head of the NS Design Violins. With the violin hanging from my neck for an entire practice, it is nice that I don’t have to worry about bumping the violin pegs out of tune.

I had read that the Bridge on the NS Design was infinitely adjustable. Yes, I did use the screws from the bottom to bring the bridge up in it mounts a little bit. But I also decided to reposition the strings along the top of the bridge, to spread them out to give the bow more clearance for One String At a Time playing. You see, no matter how far the strings are apart on top of the bridge, it is always easy to play two strings at a time. Keeping a Close Bridge is only important if one contemplates ”triple stopping”, that is, pushing the bow down on 3 strings at once (or even 4 strings, God Bless us, but that can only be done on shaved down almost flat ‘fiddle’ bridges, and that is too ‘incestuous’ for decent violin playing folk to even want to think about). No, that is not even one of my ambitions in life, to grind down on every string at once. So I spread the strings out, and the NS Design Bridge lets me do it. You just have to hold it in place for a moment while tightening up on the adjustment knob and then it stays put in its new location.

Oh, and that reminds me of another recommendation for Electric Violins over acoustics… that one does not have to reset the bridge periodically, as the bridges of traditional acoustics tend to lean more and more forward with each adjustment to their tuning. An Electric Violin’s fixed Bridge is just another easy luxury of life we can grow accustomed to. That and not having to worry about humidity, temperature or dryness compounding in ways that would destroy an expensive acoustic violin. The NS Design WAV 4 may be a bit on the heavy side, but it certainly isn’t delicate and I can’t imagine what could possibly hurt the thing.



Oh, and finally, the looks of the Thing. At first I had put the NS Design Violins toward the bottom of my list because, well, they did not look like Violins. But the look they do have – an old European Stringed Instrument Look – well, it is beautiful in its own right. This is while some of the other Electric Violins are positively Ugly – using plastic scrawling that is supposed to suggest the traditional lines of a violin… that is all simply hideous and cartoonishly immature. The NS Design is strong, compact and finally attractive… looking better in reality, in its actual physical presence, then what one captures from seeing it merely in the photographs. And since I wear it around my neck it is important that the NS Design is both attractive and compact.

Floppy B String on 5 and 6 String Bass

Floppy B String on 5 and 6 String Bass

I noticed that a great many Bass Guitar Forums discuss what must be a chronic problem in the 5-String and 6-String bass world, that is, floppy B strings. (for the newly Initiated, Bass Guitars traditionally come with just 4 strings – and E, A, D, and G. On a 5 String, the extra string is a big fat B String on the low side of the neck. On a six string bass the extra extra string is not an even fatter low string, but a higher string on the other side of the traditional fours strings – a little skinny High B String.)

On a great many postings, people are blaming the particular basses involved. This can be a valid complaint, as long as people are comparing their respective basses only in regards to their Neck Scale. You see, given a string of a particular thickness and weight, or ‘mass’ as we should call it, it will be most ‘floppy’ on the shortest neck. All other things being equal, ‘long’ equals lower, and so to bring up the pitch on a string stretched over a longer distance between nut and bridge, well, it must be made more tight, that is, less ‘floppy’. So we should expect the most complaints of floppiness to come from those whose basses have the shortest neck scales

The different Neck Scales are as follows: – Short is 30 inches, mediums are 32, 34 inches is ‘long (with the proviso that one source has it that while 34 inches is considered ‘long’ for 4 string basses, a five and six string bass are not ‘long’ until 35 inches, but this represents less than a 3% difference in length and so is probably not overly consequential), and extra longs are 36 inches. Oh, scale is measured from the nut at the top of the neck to the saddle of the bridge, so, really, the only part of the string involved in the scale measurement is the part the wiggles back and forth while making the sound.

While Neck Scale helps us to understand the problem of B String Floppiness, it is not really something we can do anything about, unless we want to solve our floppiness problem simply by buying a new bass. Most people would hold off on that particular variable until driven to it as a last resort.

I’ve seen some online forum posts which posit the idea of fixing B String floppiness by shimming or placing spacers between the string retainer and the ball. They no doubt suppose that it is taking some of the slack out of the string. However, we need to remember the basic physics of our equation here – we are only concerned with the strings width and weight (Mass) between the Nut and the Bridge Saddle. You can put a mile of shims and spacers AFTER the Bridge Saddle and it won’t make the slightest bit of difference. Where people say that such things help, well, that is the Placebo Effect at work. After going through all that trouble, they don’t wish to admit to themselves that they wasted so much time and effort, or that they had been taken in by such blunt stupidity. So, it is my guess that if the guitar works after the installation of shims and spacers, then it probably was not in such bad shape before all that useless stuff was added into the mix.

The real important variable in all these matters of B String Floppiness is the actual string. Since we are stuck with our Neck Scale dimension, the only thing we can easily change is the Mass of the string we use. All things being equal, fatter strings are lower and will tune with greater tension then a skinny string. And if the width is held equal, then a denser heavier steel and chrome steel string will tune tighter than those made of lighter materials such as nickel and aluminum (Aluminum plagues the world of violin strings – it gives a nice enough tone but it is so brittle and fragile as to fall apart after only hours of any really exerted practicing).

So look for the specifications of your ‘floppy’ B String. B strings average around .125 inches in diameter, but you can get round wound steel strings all the way up to .145 ( for example, D’addario and DR String), or flatwounds up to about .136 (Thomastik-Infeld, though they are costly… about $45 for just one B string, but you can buy them singly). Now, while the round wounds seem to come in fatter sizes than the flatwounds, remember that the density of the flats are inherently greater, because they are filled in level to the very limits of their width dimension, while round wounds have all those empty spaces within all those little round grooves – they don’t completely fill in their given diameters and so they are actually less dense than their given diameters would imply.

I myself have a Fender 5 String Bass… I think all these Fender 5 Strings come in 34 Inch ‘Long’ Scale. These guitars, given their popularity, are the one’s most often complained about. I strung my particular Fender 5 String in D’addario long scale Flats, and the B String is a .132 diameter and it is wrapped in chrome steel, making it fatter and denser than the industry average. And, yes, while the B String certainly creates for itself a great deal side to side wiggle room when it sounds, the tone is fine.

Perhaps a great many people are concerned that the B Strings seem to take up so much room ‘wiggling’ back and forth. Well, this is all to be expected. I used to work with ‘Accelerometers’, that is, little devices designed to measure acceleration G Forces, and one of the immutable laws of Acceleration is that given similar G Force intensities, lower frequency movement will have the furthest displacement. Simply speaking, for the same sound volume as another string of higher note, a lower note will create more side to side wiggle movement in order to do the same job. Your B String, by its very nature, is simply going to ‘look’ more ‘floppy’ than the other strings.

So do you really have a problem? If you get the right tone and note from your B String, and if it doesn’t buzz on the lower frets and whack against the wood, then you probably don’t really have a problem with B String floppiness… or your problem is merely psychological. But if it really bothers you and you need to do something about it, then look for a thicker string wrapped in steel. The tighter tension of the greater mass will cut down on some of that floppy looking wiggle room that so annoys you.

Oh, there are instances where strings just seem to go crazy – seeming to violate all the rules of physics. One hears of ‘dead’ strings that no longer sound. Well, this probably involves the strings separating within their windings, creating light spots and heavy spots which cause vector interactions – the string wiggles all wrong and sounds funny. But such a string will not even tune, or will rise and fall or ‘warble’ in tone. This is not ‘floppiness’… it is an entirely different problem.

But there is way in which an aged string can become ‘floppy’ over time. It happens more often with violin strings. A string stretches out, slowly over time decreasing in diameter, and as more and more string ends up getting wound up onto the tuner, then less mass is left between the Nut and the Bridge Saddle. The old stretched out string gets thinner and becomes ‘floppy’. So in cases where you have a very old string that starts to buzz on the lower frets or begins to smack the wood, when it never used to before, then it is probably just getting old, and its time to replace the old baby. Now, if you buy somebody’s used bass and you have what you believe is significant B String floppiness, and you don’t know whether to attribute the problem to String Type or to String Age… well, its probably good to get a new set of strings in any case… make the Bass your own with a shiny new set of strings. And make sure you get a set with a relatively high diameter B string. More than .130 for Flat Wounds, and more than .135 for Rounds. And then, as long as everything sounds fine, you will soon enough get used to larger oscillation swings of your B String… that just means its working right.

Open Letter to the UFO People

This World is in crisis. Control of everything is in the hands of the slightest percentage of people whose only guide and compass for their behavior is their own greedy self-interest, driving them to increase their own relative wealth by continuously increasing their levels of exploitation of both the Environment and their Fellow Man. Humanity has thus been vanquished and enslaved, and the World consigned to plunder. It will only end when every Being has been ground down to nothing, and every resource entirely exhausted. Then the last man standing will be able to declare himself the Winner of what had been a Grand Competition. You see, our System, if it can be so briefly described, is all about Competition. Of Billions of People, only one Winner will emerge, and everyone else will have to take the hind-most. The only consolation for the Losers will be that the Winner will be left with nothing much more than a cinder – a spent Planet in ruins and chaos.

Yes, of course, the People of this World should be able to perceive their own problems and arrive at their own solutions. We shouldn’t have to ask UFO People for help. The problem arises that the very people who are thinking clearly – thinking only of the Public Good without the burdens and blind-spots of self-interest and personal agenda – such people are effectively marginalized and silenced. What we have in this World is a situation where upwards of 90% of the Propaganda Media is owned and directed by just two extremely wealthy individuals. Obviously the Policy they seek to advance is the maintenance of the exactly the kind of Anarchy which allows two private individuals to buy up for themselves 90% of the World’s Propaganda Media. And then, most of the remaining 10% of the Propaganda Media is caught up in binding business partnerships which require adherence to the same anarchistic policies of the Majority Holders. Given the situation, we cannot expect that the Public would be so very well informed, either in regards to the Truth of purported Events, the ‘News’, or in regards to the span and possibilities of the choices they could be making.

Of course, in reference to our own History, and in what we can still discern from the News that they do concede to give us, we should still be able to piece together for ourselves a viable direction to take. But most people are tricked by being presented with just a few false choices. The Slave Drivers and the Plunders labor to present alternatives that seem worse than even Slave Drivers and Plunders – mostly they succeed by calling everybody else exactly what they are themselves. It’s the Burglar who allays suspicion by yelling “Stop Thief!” himself.

People who are able to arrive at the Truth themselves, well, as I’ve said before, they’re marginalized. No publishing company will publish them. No University, now controlled by Wealthy Alumni Groups, will take them on in Academia. Civilized Public Rationalism has been driven into Exile. ‘Freedom of Speech’ is now confined to some fairly narrow Corporate-Friendly limits.

This is where you UFO People could make a huge difference. You UFO People could bust wide open through the presentation of limited False Choices, and provide a Real, True, Proven, and Time-tested Alternative. You UFO People could provide a compelling glimpse of your own History, and an outline of your own Socio-Economic Institutions, that is, how you became Civilized, and how you managed to stay that way.

Yes, yes… it is obvious that you UFO People at one time or another signed some sort of a “Non-Interference” agreement. Well, while that may be true, is there any reason why you should honor such an agreement more stringently than the Earthlings you signed with. Why not do as the Earthlings themselves would – violate the agreement and leave it to some Court settle it. Screw the Contract, get a good Lawyer, and buy the Judge. Yes, it’s absolutely charming that you hold yourself to a higher ethical and moral Standard than your Partners in this Conspiracy of Silence. But they are probably just laughing at you for it. They’d never be so guilty of such naiveté.

Yes, I heard a rumor that you UFO People had once tried something close to ‘Interference’ before, and were burned for it. The World Governments were annoyed that there was so much UFO probing going on – people ‘abducted’ for study, and animals dissected and analyzed, and then just left to mysteriously rot away in the fields – it was all arousing so much suspicion that it was decided that you UFO People had violated the Non-Interference Clause of your Agreement, and sanctions were implemented. I heard a couple squadrons of Jet Bombers obliterated the Base that had been allocated for your use. Apparently they were also testing your defenses. Despite your advanced Technologies the guess was good that you UFO People did not prioritize bringing very many Weapon’s Systems with you in your odyssey across the Galaxy. We were able to figure out that you UFO People travel light. So, you are defenseless and everybody knows it. My guess is that you retreated to Deep Sea Bases that are a bit more difficult to detect and attack.

It also makes me wonder whether the losses you sustained in that Attack have permanently embittered you toward Humanity… something that the Governing Earthlings may have been counting on… an effective guarantee that you UFO People would continue to mind your own business, without any bothersome sympathies for the People of this damned World. A few people made you Enemies and attacked you so that you would hate us All. Please, I would hope you would reconsider. We are not all that bad. Many of us do not even Vote.

Anyway, we can stipulate to your reluctance to interfere in the Affairs of the World. But you need to remember that in all of this, you UFO People have now been here long enough to have some Standing… some Say… in what goes on. As it is, this World is now entirely regulated by the Push-Pull of various Special Interests, so why should your own Special Interest in all of these affairs count for nothing? How can it be to your own benefit that this Planet be plundered and destroyed by a relatively small band of ruthless Barbarian?

So, honestly speaking, as we say, the ball is in your court… it’s your move. Believe me, if your intention is to Help, than certainly nobody could possibly have grounds to blame you for speaking up.

And the Window of Opportunity is only open for a Moment. Now, this minute, the World Wide Web is still almost entirely unrestricted for most Computer Users. The Media Propaganda Companies have not yet figured out how to restrict it for just their own select Content. But it is only a matter of time until the Big Search Engines are fined tuned enough to isolate and reject, or ‘last page’ what it sees as contrary to the Accepted Media Propaganda. The time to act was Yesterday. Today is only second best but we must hurry.

What can you do? Well, three things. First, prove to everybody that you exist. Second, provide a viable example for our budding Civilization. And Third,… well, I’ll get to that.

Proving that you really exist is important. As it stands, the Powers that Be have been able to marginalize, ruin, discredit or otherwise silence anybody coming forward with information regarding your Existence. People are honestly afraid to speak seriously about the UFO People out of fear for their careers and professional standing. In one case I heard of the Government simply withdrawing all the identification, career and education credentials, and credit history of a certain individual. One day he was a Respected Scientist speaking out about UFO People, and the next he was reduced to being a penniless and homeless man, living on the street, begging his meals. It didn’t matter what he said… everybody figured he was crazy. The same trick works every time.

But if you UFO People were to make a sudden, concerted and deliberately large Show of yourselves, before the largest Urban Centers, and before the largest possible crowds, then the Method of Discreditation would no longer work… they can’t throw everybody on the street… at least not all at once. Yes, the Media would definitely go into a Frenzy of trying to prove to everybody that they did not really see what they saw, claiming mass hysteria or video projections tricks behind it all, and many people who are conditioned to believe the TV before they believe their own two eyes would be swayed into discrediting themselves. But if your UFO “Unveiling” is accomplished on a large enough scale, and everybody gets to See, then it would end in the decision that the People who still refuse to believe, that they are the new Crazy Ones.

Once your Existence is no longer questioned, then you could add your Voice to the Grand Debate – what is it to be a Civilized and Moral Being, and how does a collection of People come together to create a durable, sustainable, and yet still enjoyable Civilization. As I suggested at the top of this essay, you UFO People could publish On Line, while you still have a chance, a History of your Civilization and Blue Print of your Social, Economic and Governmental Institutions. Of course, if your Civilization is upwards to 50 Million Year Old then any detailed History would seem to go on endlessly. But in any case, selection and editing would have to cut down the bulk of it all to some reasonable length. How much? I would suggest 10 Volumes of about a 1000 Pages each. That would be 10,000 Pages. Most people can read 200 pages a week in their spare time without being excessively burdened, and at 200 pages a week one could read 10,000 pages in a year. It would help if the content, as much as possible, could be kept pithy and interesting – a lot of heroic characters doing and saying clever things – after all, we would want people to be able to feel some connection and sympathy with the Ten Volumes. This would without a doubt break through the Limited Choices problem now stifling our Intellectual Debates. Given the Solidity and Certainty of your Civilization, the Ways and Means of your Civilization could no longer be ignored out of some sense of Political Correctness – that anything not entirely good for Rich People is bad for Everybody.

The Third Thing… well, that is a special favor. So that the Ten Volumes will have some relatively rapid influence, it would probably be wise to publish it first in the most common vernacular Languages – English, Mandarin, Portuguese, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean… to name a few. But the greatest coup would be to have the Ten Volumes published in a Universal Language. It could be Your Language, providing Human tongues could wrap around it, or it could be an Intelligent Language created out of the wealth of the World’s already most prevalent languages… but with consistent rules, no ‘irregular’ verbs, and easy spelling.

Ever since the Tower of Babel Humanity has been divided by competing languages, jealous of their position and relative influence. One Language, presented as a Gift from outside, showing no favoritism to any particular group or nation, would be a veritable God-Send. The Foundation of a One World Civilization would be a One World Language.

Also, there would be a great many Interests out to discredit the Ten Volumes as some kind of contrived fiction – a huge fraud. But given a New Universal Language, with Reference Materials of course to aid in translation and study, then any opposing Interest Group would have a difficult time of it trying to equate the Scale of such an Accomplishment to being a merely just an On Line Trick. Yes, while some diligent crackpot somewhere could write a pile of books, and even get them translated somehow, it would be virtually impossible to do the same with a unique and comprehensive Language… not without some very extensive Institutionalized Resources. With all of our Spies, Police, and Intelligence Agents – Public and Private – it would soon become clear to everybody who had the means to check that no Human Office generated such content. .

Anyway, perhaps it will all help us to turn the corner and become a better World and a better People. We too can arrive at being Civilized – Moral and Caring People living in a Sustainable Way in a Healthy World. We just might need a little outside help in getting there.