Does Bow Quality Matter?
Hi everyone. I recently played on my teacher's violin and bow just for fun. I was expecting the violin to blow me away the most, but as I took the bow from her hand, it was like a slap in the face. Her bow was amazing. It felt perfect in the hand and it also played buttery smooth.I have shaking hands so getting a nice sound out of a long bow stroke is a never-ending challenge for me. On her bow it wasn't. It never had a single bounce from my shaking hand. It absorbed all shake and played perfectly.
After playing some short little excerpts to test the abilities of both the violin and the bow, I told my teacher, "This bow must've descended from heaven!" It was absolutely incredible.
I was expecting it to be maybe a couple thousand dollars.
>>>>>>>>>>>I'VE NEVER PLAYED A BOW MORE THAN $500, SO I WAS ASSUMING!!!!!!<<<<<<<<<
The bow was $10,000 she told me. I was shocked! I always have wanted a new bow, because my bow is SIGNIFICANTLY less than my violin and playing her bow on my violin made it sound even better than it already sounds.
I'm willing to spend maybe $1500 at most. Is it worth the money to upgrade from a $650ish bow to a $1500 bow or should I keep saving to meet a specific price point. It would be nice to get a nice bow that I could really use, but how much would I need to really pay. I wouldn't spend 10 grand on a violin worth maybe 8 at the very most.
I'm VERY uneducated in bows, besides for the fact that like a violin they are very personal and you need to try many to find the right one, so any recommendations or help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
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Replies (73)
I demoed several of them while playing quartets and quintets and they played beautifully. While I love my Ouchard and Morizot bows, I'd be perfectly happy on one of his!
Check out John Greenwood at: http://www.greenwoodbows.com/
I recommend going on a personal search to a top violin shop where you can try hundreds of bows on your own violin not only within your price range, but above and below it as well. After running each bow through its paces (have a brief routine of music to cover your musical range) put it in one of two "piles," one for (1) return to dealer and the other for (2) bows you might want to own. As you try more bows you will find yourself moving bows from pile (2) to pile (1). I predict you will be surprised at the price range in both piles and that you may find a bow that is great for you at a reasonable price.
I suggest being certain your violin is in perfect working order when you test bows because it is possible to select as "best" a bow that compensates for an instrument's setup problems (or other correctible flaws, such as a wolf) only to learn in the future that there are other, cheaper ways to fix that problem. I also suggest that one of the musical parts of your test routine MUST BE a 2-octave scale up the G string!
The bow is the primary means by which you produce a sound on the violin. If the bow doesn't work well for tone production as well as endurance and strokes such as sautille', spiccato, ricochet, staccato, then you are dead in the water.
I'll go a step further and say that for violin, EVERYTHING matters.
Yes, it does matter. Most definitely.
I've also heard the saying that different violin needs different bow to match. I'd like to know what you guys think about this claim. I recently bought a new violin (Topa), and I'm trying some different bows to see if there'll be a better match to the Topa than my current Reid Hudson bow, which I'm quite happy with. I haven't found one within my price range, although above a certain point, the price is not necessarily a good indicator. Like all other have said, you've got to try as many as you can, but also get feed back from other violinist(s) about the sound they produce in distance.
A player can always adapt to their equipment; it can be annoying to do so, but it's doable. The problem with that for a student is that you don't yet know the optimal ways to do things (and therefore how you can adapt that proper technique to non-optimal circumstances), and a bow (or violin) which doesn't give good feedback can hamper your learning.
In the $750 - $1k range, you can get a perfectly adequate bow, though. Carbon-fiber or Brazilian workshop (Arcos Brazil, etc.)
Higher-end bows can make an immense difference. Contemporary bowmakers are turning out great work, although I've found it difficult to get ahold of such bows to try.
In the end you dont have any option but to try as many bows as you get your hand on.
I looked many years for bows and own 4 modern (meaning not baroque) bows. The latest buy was a couple of months ago and the cheapest one, a bow by Albert Leicht. Still I prefer it on my violin over the others costing multiple times the money. Testing the bow with different violins however revealed that this is just a very good combination and with other violins this bow mostly does not work as good as my other bows.
I also recommend testing some mid tier CF bow, like Arcus in comparison to a common wooden bow. The sound is a bit different with a good playability for some (they are as individual to each other as wooden bows).
There are ofc bows that are generaly better as others and most times they are not the cheapest one, but you can find your personal gem in every price range.
My own theory is that as one becomes a better violinist, one increasingly recognizes and amplifies the significance of vanishingly subtle effects. One becomes increasingly sensitive to small errors in intonation, for example. Even for a rank amateur like me, three grams' difference felt huge. On the other hand, I thought my violin sounded just as good with my $500 CF bow as it did with two fine bows that a local pro violinist showed me, even when he was the one playing. The same pro told me that I'd have to spend at least $2000 on a wood bow to outperform my CF.
As an amateur, over the years I've noticed something I wouldn't believe I'd notice ever: the bow is just as important as the violin. The right hand is just as important, if not more important, as the left hand.
What CF bow was that?
Heck yes it does, sometimes I think it matters more than the instrument you are playing on. In my experience a bad bow will not allow a good instrument to sing, but a good bow can improve the sound of a mediocre instrument. Go and try lots of bows as already outlined above, have fun though don't be too serious as this can and often does adversely affect your choice, remember music is fun.
Cheers Carlo
https://www.jrjuddviolins.com/product/eastman-cadenza-model-305/
I see that they are asking $450. That is what I paid. There is some flux in the naming of these products. The bow I bought was stamped "Cadenza Master," and as far as I know, it was not an Eastman product. Later, the "Master" name was associated with their "Three Star" product (the model 305). Now I see that there is a new product called "Cadenza Master" that is an $800 bow:
https://www.jrjuddviolins.com/product/cadenza-master-2/
That does not look like my bow.
The (true) story goes that a certain teacher with a large studio, himself a well-regarded pro violinist, wanted to find a model of CF bow that he could recommend to his students, something that would reliably play well at a reasonable price. He tried a great many and the one he chose is the Cadenza 305. I now have three of them: My bow, my 2nd bow, and my daughter's bow. As far as I can tell they are indistinguishable from one another.
Thanks for the detailed info. Any experience with JonPaul CF bows?
I'm curious to know how long it takes to make a bow compared to a violin. I realize that time is necessarily the a measure of effort, and that it's not a measure of skill at all, but it's one measure that might illuminate the "ratio" of costs that we might expect to incur, at least at the amateur level, for contemporary instruments.
About value, my guess is that quality does not scale with price but rather with the logarithm of price, with an error margin of, say, plus or minus 0.2 on the logarithm. Thus one should not be surprised to find a $3000 bow and a $8000 bow that are comparable to other $5000 bows one has tested. One should start to see noticeable differences when doubling the price, which corresponds to a difference of 0.3 in the logarithm.
Of course a certain 3k bow can be better than a certain 5k one. A 30k violin can also be better than a 50k one.
Also as I said at my first post here, there are some magic fits with violins. My cheapest (despite some unused student ones) bow works great on my violin, but not as good as my other ones on most other violins.
This is a statistical behaviour, the price quality ratio. For such a big frame of factor 10 testing 12 bows does not tell anything.
I would also never just try 12 violins before buying one (although today I played enough to be able to decide on a single one without direct comparison I played hundreds over the years).
Last time I was bow shopping I had around 80 bows between 2k and 6k (blind tested). With most bows I had a single stroke on the string before knowing I would not use them.
The ones I liked were mostly the expensive ones but also some cheaper ones, of which I bought one.
I'm surprised to read that. I'd have guessed that the center of gravity (I assume that that is what this means) is the second thing a manufacturer designs for, after the total mass, and before moment of inertia (mass distribution) and stiffness. Where should the center of gravity be? How many millimeters is it allowed to deviate from the ideal value?
I have a simple brazilwood bow that came with the violin kit and a €130 CF bow; the CoG is the same within +/- 5 mm.
Bows can be stored far more compactly than violins, and the average decent shop will have a lot more bows to try than a violin. You can and should try a lot of bows before making a major investment in a bow.
The advent of decent-quality CF bows under $500 means that most intermediate-level players (i.e., those for whom a decent bow starts to become very important) can now own a bow with reasonable playing qualities. In the $500 - $1k range, you can now get CF bows that are entirely usable for any level of playing (even though CF tends not to sound as good as wood); in that price range, you can also get fairly nice contemporary bows from the Brazilian workshops. Many players are never going to need anything better than that.
(I have not found that CF bows are balanced significantly differently, other than some bows in the Arcus line, which are very light and feel a little weird.)
Fine contemporary bows typically go for the $4k-$6k range these days, though like all contemporary work there's stuff above and below that price range.
Broadly, I would say that you are more likely to get a great-playing contemporary bow for $4k than you are to get a great-playing antique for $4k. Good antique makers generally go for $7k+ these days.
Differences between bows are not usually subtle, but there are a lot of interesting variations that can make it hard to decide what you really want -- there are more obvious trade-offs than there are with violins, in my opinion, since bows can be optimized for certain types of playing. Those trade-offs can make it hard to decide which of several good bows you prefer.
Also, some playing characteristics can potentially be contradictory. For instance, I fell briefly in love with a Sartory that played incredibly smoothly, allowing me to do bow changes seamlessly. But it also didn't articulate as well -- it didn't automatically start notes with a little consonant or cause individual notes to pop. I didn't buy it; my teacher pointed out that it requires less technical effort to cover a bow change than it does to make a bow articulate cleanly.
When I was trying out bows, I had some consistent characteristics that I liked, but I also liked two different types of sticks -- I think of the difference as a more elegant feel (like an FN Voirin) versus a strong and solid feel (like a Sartory). I like both. All other things being equal I probably prefer elegance, but I ended up buying a stronger stick.
I think that players working with a budget probably ought to get the best-playing stick they can for a wide variety of scenarios. Those with more money to indulge and collect might want different bows for different situations.
Marc Marshall, I just wanted to say that I tried 12 violins at the shop I eventually bought my violin from. Overall, I think I tried close to 50 over the course of about 4 months before I finally found mine.
It's annoying for a player to be complimented on the sound of his or her instrument ("actually it was ME making that sound!"), but at least they never have to suffer compliments about the bow. The fact that it's possible to objectify the desirable qualities of a bow far more precisely than those of a violin leaves little room for magic, which I submit is mainly in the mind of the player. All those bows we reject before finding the "right" one aren't bad bows and one day someone will surely be happy to buy them. With that in mind I recommend buying a decent Chinese bow and working hard to get to know it!
There are bows that make some advanced technics mostly impossible and the sound limitation by the bow is nothing you can overcome.
Of course the player makes instruments sing, but if an instrument cant, there will be nobody able to change that.
Part of a very good players quality is also to be able to identify equipment that allows everything he wants to do.
There once was the discussion here where someone posted a link to Oliviera playing a cheapish violin and it was obvious there is a heavy limitation by the violin a lot of us realized without knowing what violin that was. (If I remwmber correctly it was the how to afford a proffessional quality violin thread with close 200 posts).
Notably, pernambucco blanks have changed in quality over the years, thanks to damage wrought to the forests by acid rain. I'm guessing that the nutrient composition of the soil likely also leads to somewhat different cellular structure in the wood itself, affecting tone and playing qualities.
Someone who can hear the difference between violins should also be able to hear the differences between bows. A skilled observer who knows what to listen for -- the consonant click of the start of a bow, the clarity with which notes pop out, the crispness of a spiccato, and the like -- can also hear those differences. The player can feel more under the hand, and I would wager that most players can more accurately describe what they're feeling with a bow than what they're feeling with a violin.
A good player can make an indifferent fiddle sound the best it possibly can, but that doesn't mean there is no difference between an indifferent violin and a great violin. I assure you, audition committees can hear the difference in quality of instruments from behind the screen (and these are all good players). The better the player, the easier it is to hear the difference between instruments.
A poor player will sound poor no matter what.
A poor player will sound poor no matter what. "
So true. I go to every professional quartet performance I can get my hands on. I usually can tell which quartet has great instruments from which have great players. I have a special tenderness towards fine musicians who play on good but not great violins (and bows).
Steve, I hear you too. Is it in the stick or in our head? Is there any expert in acoustics here willing to shed some light on how different bows can match different violins in ways that are so convincing to us?
A proper blind test should have the easy-to-measure properties matched: mass, center of gravity, moment of inertia, bending stiffness, and hair tension. And both should have similar hair and the same rosin. I would believe that a CF bow can be manufactured to match these properties, although you'd probably want to do it the other way around: find a pernambuco bow that matches a particular high-end CF bow for those properties.
That way, you would actually test for the more mysterious properties that pernambuco supposedly has. Or maybe you wouldn't need to conduct playing tests at all if it turns out that you can't find any matched pair.
If its better or not, well... Scientifically speaking CF works well and gets a comparable volume to wood ( not on bad instruments interstingly). What you prefer is personal preference. I own a Arcus S8 and like it, but if I hd to choose I clearly would keep my wooden bows and most people seem to agree.
It still is a good bow.
Q. How can they not matter?
A. If their amplitudes are vanishing.
CF bows do not have the same stiffness, mass, and mass distribution as wood bows.
Of corse the first order will be pretty much the same (they are not in reallity as there are typically different parameter ranges on cf and wood bows), but what happens above the first order is another story.
With bows you are much more likely to pick one up and know within a handful of notes, "No, not this one." I normally start out with an "immediate rejection" pile for those bows.
Bows that I like, but aren't a good tonal match, go into a pile where I'll usually ask for an identification of the maker, since that gives me a general sense of what makers I like.
I try to stack-rank the remaining bows.
Still, there are levels of excellence, some of which are obvious. I first tried a great bow by accident-- my violin had been into Rene Morel's shop for a repair, and he wanted to do an adjustment before it left. Probably because he was holding onto the case, I didn't have my own bow, so he went to fetch one. A little of his magic on the soundpost and bridge, and the instrument sounded like a million bucks. And the bow was ridiculously easy to use. "What is it?" I asked. "Dominique Peccatte-- $6,000." (Those were the days.) The violin never again sounded that good.
One other time, I had determined to try a bow that I bought too hastily at an auction, just to see if I'd been unfair to it. This was a decent stick from a famous if not revered family of French makers. I put it in my case before an orchestra concert, so I could give it a fair workout.
All through the first half, I was getting fantastic impressions about the sound I was making; the playing quality of the bow was similarly good. During a break between movements, I took a look at the frog to make sure it was the one I was supposed to be evaluating. Of course, it was my best bow, which was then and still is miles better than the other. Not quite a blind test, but I'd stand by the results.
I switched bows a bit back not only because I needed a better tonal match to a different violin, but because my bow technique had changed to one where the bow is usually more deeply into the string, and it was helpful to have a more resilient stick.
Many dont like them as they are a bit hard to land to a long tone after jumping. But that is something I found in some very good bows and very rarly in cheaper ones. Most bows with this characteristics have some playing frequencys where they get out of control. Cheap bows need a great amount of tension before I like to play them, they would not last long this way.
If the stick is to stiff at the first light touch I wont like it.
Different for everyone.
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There are a lot of good makers today-- they tend to charge $3,500 on up past $5,000 and higher. But if you find an obscure maker (say, From an emerging market), you might get lucky for less.
There are also categories of antiques that are a bit underpriced. German bows, as a group, are less popular than antique French bows, but the best ones can be very good. And, yes-- a good one can make a huge difference. Especially when you are still getting your technique and tone production figured out.
Also in your price class, there are some carbon-fiber sticks that are pretty good.
The best thing is to go to a good shop and ask to try bows. The more you see, the more you'll know about what is possible.