DEJA rosin - a shameless promotion or helpful advice?
I purchased a cake of "DEJA 'soloist' rosin" from Etsy.com last week. I did this in response to a query on Maestronet.com about the stuff and since no one else responded I decided to buy a cake of the stuff and try it.I have no commercial connection with this product and no connection with any one involved with it. Because of its current position in the market it is unlikely to attract attention from those who might find it useful.
Thus the following:
Apparently I was the first purchaser of Deja “Soloist” rosin (a week ago) and I thought it fair to provide a review. Deja is a neat cylindrical cake, of 3/4" thickness and 1.5" diameter - a substantial size. It is nicely packaged in an aluminum can that holds the rosin and its attached cloth. I find this case particularly nice because the top is threaded: a much better idea (in my experience) than the friction fit aluminum cases that come with several other rosin brands.
(1) The threading makes the cylinder less likely to deform and
(2) Treaded tops go on and off more easily than the friction-fit ones.
The rosin itself is not too soft or too hard (may tend toward the harder end of the usual range). I tested it on 8 bows, 1-violin, 4-viola, and 3-cello (after removing what residual rosin I could with a microfiber cloth) and played on the appropriate instruments. In my initial short trials I did not get enough rosin on the bow hairs and the resulting sound had a bit too much high end. So before starting the subsequent trials I lightly scored** the top of the rosin cake in a square grid. This provided sufficient rosin to get a good idea of what this rosin will do. It provided good, rich tone on violin and viola. It gave me a bit more overtone sound on cello than I am used to but without losing the rich lower quality. On the other hand it also gave a richer and firmer tone from the higher octaves of the C string than I get with my usual rosins. I double-checked this with a second, heavier cello bow that has even more trouble in that “high-C” string cello range – it was improved too. The bows I used were decent, if not spectacular, ranging in retail market value from about $500 up to about $5,000 each.
**(Scoring the surface of a new rosin cake is not something I usually (if ever) do.)
The Deja rosin seems to have “staying power,” keeping its tonal character long enough for a concert and produces very little dust. I think it is a very good deal at its price ($9) both for quality and quantity/size and competes well with rosins that retail for many times its price. (The rosins I have used and favored for the past few years are the costly Leatherwood brands. I have tested several dozen different rosin brands over the past 20 years.)
I have long felt that an ideal rosin would create static friction (that distorts the string and thus initiates the vibration that causes the sound - the bigger the displacement the louder the sound) in proportion to the pressure applied to the string by downward force as well as by the speed of the bow and would have sliding friction (that damps the string vibration during the slip phase) of zero over a wide range of pressure (which would eliminate friction damping). I feel this rosin comes closer to that ideal than any I have tried in the past 20 years (maybe 70 years) - it's not something I am equipped to measure quantitatively.
I think Deja will bring out overtones from any instrument very well and this should promote "projection," but I have not tried it in a large hall. On my cellos (and with the 3 bows I tried) it brings out the upper octaves of the C string like no other rosin I have tried.
I have also tested the DEJA playing qualities for a typical "set" duration of say 2 hours by playing viola in a string trio with the result that DEJA ROSIN seems to be a good deal, especially for the price and size of the cake. It has gotten very hot here in northern CA for a few days (~100°F) during this testing period and we also had days that were in the 70s - so it's had a pretty good test of a temperature range behavior.
Replies (24)
Turns you can actually make bass rosin even softer.
I like the idea of a threaded top, sometime the friction lids get sticky and are hard to get off. I have no connection with this product.
Thanks Andrew.
DEJA needs a waiting list. Then they can double the price. The waiting list need not be real. It can be manufactured. I strongly suspect this the case with Baker's Rosin. We're talking about a natural resource that is NOT in short supply.
35 Canadian pesos? No thanks! Maybe I'll just make my own rosin.
Works whether I move the bow or the rosin!
(Is there a limerick in there somewhere?)
Voila! No more chipped rosin!!
Certainly for the price, it is very competitive with Guillaume and Melos, the rosins I regularly use. I tried it with a couple orchestra students and they were shocked at how much difference a decent rosin could make- they are playing on stuff that is of questionable quality to begin with so of course the results were dramatic. ;)
Hooray for another excellent rosin on the market at a VERY reasonable price per cake. Sign me up for more!
My Mum once won a washing machine for her detergent slogan! I'm not suggesting any similarity there of course
Andy's idea of glueing it to the top is also very attractive. Is there any glue that is particularly (in)effective?
I used super glue to attach the rosin cake to the top of the container. Be sure to glue the flat side of the cake to the top, not the smoother but slightly irregular side.
The cake comes packed in a cloth all within the Al container. My first cake was actually glued to the cloth, but subsequent cakes were just wrapped in it (I bought some more Deja for family members). Good idea to prevent breakage before it gets to the buyer.
I do like it quite a bit - though I've not much experience in different rosins. Compared with my Piastro Oliv rosin the notes seem much cleaner with less squeaking or other odd sounds from my bow. It may simply be that I do need a much lighter rosin in the warmer months but there was a decided difference in my playing with the Deja rosin. The difference was too immediate to ascribe it to some miraculous improvement in my playing :-)
**I would not use it for gluing violin or bow things.
Packaging needs a re-think. The cloth makes it hard to remove from the can, and is not attached to the cake. So, if cloth is required, glue it to the cake and use a cardboard box, a la Salchow. If the can takes priority, glue the rosin to the lid and get rid of the cloth. I bought 99c worth of super-glue and stuck it to the lid with no difficulty (so far).
The actual rosin seems remarkably good. I didn't do all combinations of bow and violin, the climate is changing, and I was in a room that I don't usually practice in, etc. So this is very preliminary. But first impression was that it is like the Rondo strings. Slightly bright, vibrant, and going loud with not much extra effort. I shall take it across the pond to see how it handles constant humidity and then cool weather.
As to whether it is better than anything else... ???. Leatherwood struck me as very fine sounding. A few years later, I wonder if it is still as good. Age doesn't necessarily help the very best stuff improve, so maybe a new order would outdo the original one. Anyway, the new cake of Deja made an obvious improvement to bows that had previously been given Solo or Leatherwood. But time enough to test all of this. In the meantime, it is not expensive, it has a lovely can once you glue the rosin to the lid, and it makes nice noises.
