Camille = $1,000,000 with Dominants on.

October 9, 2009 at 2:16 PM

New violin always begins, for me, with the string quest. My violin has plenty of edge, power, and depth all by herself. She needs a bit of warming up, clarity, and darkening.

I tried just about every string out there, except various types of gut (liked and tried Olivs, but not stable enough) + Helicores. I really liked the Olivs + Helicore A + Gold Label E combo, but I still felt like there was more in her, and the Olivs constantly went out of tune, even after a week, and they were used before on my previous violin.

Surrendering to the fact that nothing really works, I decided to put on a fresh set of Dominants + Gold Label E, Hilary Hahn's and Itzhak Perlman's combo, I believe.

WOW.

I now sound like them. I think Dominants only really work on violins that already sound amazing all by themselves. Spend $16k on a violin, and you can use cheaper strings. Spend $3-6k on a violin, and using more expensive strings, you can make the violin sound more valuable.

Still, the $16k violin sounds WAY better. I <3 Camille. =D

From Bart Meijer
Posted on October 9, 2009 at 2:23 PM

Tasha,

Congratulations. You solved Hisamatsu's famous koan: if nothing works, what do you do?

Put on Dominants and Gold Label E, obviously. I'll try to remember.

(this week is Zen week)

Bart

From Tasha Miner
Posted on October 9, 2009 at 2:34 PM

Thanks, Bart! I <3 Zen week. =D

From Christopher Liao
Posted on October 11, 2009 at 4:58 AM

I am totally considering this route again. Kinda miss that combo...

Darn the string industry, exploiting my curiosity! >:I