Yippee! New bow, here I come!
December 14, 2005 at 1:51 AM
I've been wanting to get a new bow for a while, so I decided I'd wait and see if I got an end-of-year bonus at work, then buy it out of that if possible. Our company had a good year, because my bonus was quite a bit bigger than I expected. (Hmmm...I'd like a new instrument too, while I'm at it, but I don't think I deserve one until I'm a better violinist.)
Looks like I'll be heading back up to Ifshin Violins in Berkeley again. (Hate the city, love the shop) If anyone has advice on bow-buying they'd like to share, I'd appreciate it. I've tried other bows to know that they can affect my sound dramatically, but I'm not sure how to detect quality. I borrowed a bow from a fellow orchestra member once that I liked and she said it cost her $45. Shows what I know!
Wow... a nice $45 bow? Thats a lucky find! I just got a new bow too, and my best advice is to put it through all of the tests. Ex: make sure it bounces well, its not tip heavy, etc. Also, what my teacher and I found in my old bow was that it shook the tiniest bit in a certain spot every time, which i had never really noticed, but it was affecting my playing. So just pay attention to details like that. Good luck!
I tried countless bows at a bunch of shops, narrowed it down to what felt good in my hand and then took those in for my teacher to check out. She made sure they did everything they are supposed to be capable of doing. I wouldn't have felt comfortable laying out that sort of $$$ based on my own clueless opinion.
Give the bows you might buy auditions. Try playing something easy, like scales or a simple tune, and concentrate on the bow. Does it work well on all four strings? How easy is it to control and what is the quality of the sound like at the frog, middle, and tip? Does it maneuver well when you cross strings? How well does it perform on slow, gradual crescendos and decrescendos? Dotted slurs? Staccato? Legato? Spiccato? Beginning a note with an attack? Glissando? Really quick notes with a short part of the bow and long, slow, smooth bowing? The latter is an especially important test. Try everything you can think of. Then try playing a piece you love and see whether the bow can bring out the beauty of the music.
From Mendy Smith
Posted on December 15, 2005 at 5:40 AM
Hello neighbor (sorta). I just got a new bow myself down in Santa Cruz - I've got to make th edrive up to Berkley. Anywho, when I just choose my new one, I did open strings at various speeds and parts of the bow to see where the 'bounce' was and how severe it was (I have a bounce problem) adn to hear the tone. Then did scales, a few lines of pieces that I'm playing now. Try out several with the same method and then start narrowing it down. Make sure you do this in a room with good acoustics.
From Karin Lin
Posted on December 15, 2005 at 7:06 AM
Thanks for the comments, everyone, especially Eric; I hadn't thought to get my teacher's input, but that's an obvious thing to do. I'll definitely play a variety of passages using different techniques with any prospective bow, but I'm just worried that there will be some aspect of bow quality that I'm not a good enough violinist to detect. It does seem that most shops will let you take a few to try for a while, so at least there won't be the pressure of having to choose with just a few minutes on each one.
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