The idea of a 5 string instrument is a historical leapfrog of sorts, an echo from the pre-orchestral, pre–“classical canon” days of viols and other instruments, when makers were not locked into copying masters such as Stradivari.
Bach famously wrote one of his cello suites for a 5-string instrument (with a high E) and custom instruments with different tunings proliferated. This all changed when large orchestras for operas and mass entertainment came into being, and large numbers of instrumentalists had to blend with each other, read the same music, and share consistent, extremely sophisticated playing techniques.
Strad and Guarneri violins became a design pattern on which most makers and players could happily agree, and older, non-standard instruments were cut down or otherwise modified to conform to developing defacto standards. As the bulk of the working string musicians’ population gradually moves away from Western European symphonic jobs to other contemporary and traditional musics, standardization is again becoming less and less important and soloists and small group players look for instruments to fit their more diverse needs. These players, combined with a growing population of brilliant, knowledgeable and creative luthiers, has created a synergistic atmosphere for new, wonderful, and often bizarre instruments which can solve old problems (and sometimes create new problems) and spark further creativity.
Of course the new possibilities the 5-strings open up would not have been possible without the builders. Most good luthiers have shied away from an unproven design which may use up months of work only to fail with a weak C or E string, or a generally uneven sound. When Bobby Hicks decided he had to have one, he “sat down right there in the dressing room of the Golden Nugget in Vegas and drilled another hole in the pegbox and tailpiece of the fiddle I was using, and stuck a peg in there. That must have been about 1963.”
Most players and makers are not so bold. As interest and demand increases, it’s only been recently that a few pioneering luthiers have learned how to solve the various problems with constructing an instrument that sounds good with an expanded range.
There are more builders than ever who are offering a 5 string option. An initial list is started on the Links page, and will be added to as more makers and players check in here.
To begin with, I will focus here on just a few makers at 3 different price ranges: Student (or spare instrument), working musician, and “high-end”.
John Silakowski, a fiddle maker in Indiana, has done more to populate the world with excellent 5 string fiddles than anyone else, with 65 built as of May 2007. Some of the best fiddlers in the world have his 5 strings: Casey Driessen, Brittany Haas, Aubrey Haney, many of the other Nashville fiddlers and fiddlers all over the world. He has been making them since 1994, when his friend the late great fiddler Randy Howard asked him to build one for him. “I had been building 4 strings and mandolins for a while, but Randy wanted a five. We were at the Opry when Randy was playing with Rhonda Vincent and Randy said ‘let’s go look at Bobby Hicks’ fiddle.’ Bobby liked the way it played — so we got the string spacing and some of the measurements off that fiddle.” This was an extraordinary fiddle built by Harvey Keck, for Hicks, who has been playing it exclusively since the late seventies. John made a couple more to those measurements using a slightly longer string length of 13¼″ and got some advice from a viola maker, Mark Womat, who suggested that John just take a regular violin pattern and enlarge it slightly on a xerox machine. “Everyone liked the string spacing from Bobby’s fiddle, and I wound up making the fiddle deeper in the ribs, 29 cm at the neck and 33 cm at the endpin. That gave us some more air space too.”
John works closely with each fiddler to set each violin up to that player’s satisfaction, so there is no set formula for determining the curve of the fingerboard or bridge, but the bridge has a slightly flat curve, as on most fiddles. “The top thickness is pretty normal- I don’t do anything different there. I do make the bass bar a little heavier- about one millimeter taller and a half mil wider- it’s not much. The C string doesn’t really put that much more pressure on the top since the string length is short. John makes the necks as small as he can. “Since the neck is wider, there’s more ebony and it will still be strong even if you trim the neck way down, which I usually do. There’s no reason to have a big neck on these instruments.” John has started to use ¾ size tuning pegs in order to keep the peg box to a more normal size, but keeps a full-size shaft on them to forestall breakage. He has been talking to the Wittner company to try to make a more aesthetically pleasing 5-string tailpiece, as he, along with many others, feel that the Thomastik (the only one currently available) is too heavy.
John feels confident that he can adjust power and brightness of his fiddles to a large degree, and his results have borne this out. His tastes run from Lombardy Poplar, slightly less dense than maple, to Italian spruce and anything in between as long as he can be assured of its age, at least 50 years. His current favorite wood is an Adirondack spruce which he says was used in the old Gibson mandolins and Martin guitars: “it starts off sounding real bright but after only about 30 hours of playing, it changes a lot and darkens up. I’ve seen it happen over and over and it’s predictable now.” The demand for John’s instruments is intense, and growing all the time. “I don’t care if I never build another 4-string.”
Gary Bartig’s “Dahlia” brand 5 string fiddles are a very well-thought-out solution to the 5 string fiddle question. Manufactured in China by a father-son musician team and set up individually by Bartig, these instruments are very inexpensive for the quality. The 5-string is a labor of love for Gary, who makes a living manufacturing a very popular acoustic-electric upright bass, the Eminence Bass, which he developed for touring bassists.
I had the opportunity to play 6 Dahlias recently at Bartig’s workshop in Minneapolis, and was impressed with the thought and care put into them. These instruments, while close to normal violin length and size, are very broad across the belly and have a modified, rounded lower bout recalling some of the old ‘pochette’ dancing-master fiddles, and echoing the design of his ubiquitous basses. The finish is appropriate to a good student instrument in these times: nothing incredible, but a tasteful and nice thin finish, with a small amount of figure here and there in the wood. Gary said he had worked hard on the dimensions and had arrived at a decision to go slightly heavier in the backs and slightly larger for the F- holes, to contribute to a more powerful top end. He also listened closely to many players for his decision to make the string spacing the same as a 4-string.
My first impression of the Dahlia violin was the size of the neck; it seemed large but the strings are the same spacing as a normal 4-string fiddle. The large neck, good radius, and comfortable neck finish encourages a more ‘open’ left hand which contributes to relaxation. Even with my relatively small hand, I didn’t notice that stretches were any more of a problem than with a small neck. The tone was not that of a fine handmade violin, but was extremely “friendly”, with an attractive evenness and a decently strong E string. The C string was by no means capable of bone-rattling power, but it fit well tonally with the other strings and was not embarrassing or mooey. They remind me of the that special category of good travel guitars, which many players fall in love with for their flexibility and ease of playing. These instruments fit that mold: humble, balanced instruments, solid and well-made with a decent tone, fun and easy to pick up and play.
The price makes it possible for many violinist/fiddlers to have a 5-string as an adjunct instrument, to put a pickup on, to play for jam sessions, or to teach with. Many old-time fiddlers would be perfectly satisfied with one of these as their main instrument.
Chicago luthier Martin Brunkalla has built instruments for Sara Watkins and other fiddlers as well as several Chicago symphony players, and has built several 5-strings on both the violin and viola patterns. He prefers to keep the violin bodies closer to normal size, and go with a small viola body if the player wants more power in the C string. He developed a smaller ‘Tertis’ viola model 5 string which worked well for one client. He solves the closer string spacing question by keeping the neck closer to a normal width but pushing the strings out closer to the edges of the fingerboard. “I found that players were bothered more by a wider neck or closer string spacing than the strings being closer to the edge of the board”.
The late great luthier’s John Sullivan’s last 2 instruments happened to be 5-string violins. Both turned out spectacularly well and cap a legacy of great instruments. John decided to stay with a violin-size pattern. “I was just responding to players. They wanted a 5 string with a low C, not a viola with a high E. That’s all. And as far as pulling it off goes, I’ve been working at it in my head for like fifteen years. I took it on as a really fun project and put everything I’ve learned into it in hopes of pulling it off.”
He turned to Stradivarius for inspiration: “I basically took a Stradivarius ‘Messiah’ pattern and put his biggest specs into it. It’s a slightly longer string strength because it’s Strad’s long scale. The width at the middle bouts I left alone because the big thing in 5-strings is that you need bow room. I increased the top arching about 3 millimeters. It’s about 18.5 mm. And then I tilted the fingerboard about a millimeter and a half down on the C side. That’s to mainly give you bow room on the E string. Between the arching and the tilting of the fingerboard, it gave more clear space to bow. I wasn’t afraid to open up the f holes just a little bit because of the arching at the top. So the air space is slightly more, from the more arched top and large body, but it’s pretty much corresponding to a Strad. It’s in the realm of a normal size violin, yet powerful anyway. Because you want to support that high end. And in the recurve around the edges of the arching I went quite thin so you got a good diaphragm effect so it would support the low end, and then I thinned out the back to a degree to help bring out the treble because thickening the top decreases the treble a little bit.”
John also modified the end block. “I doubled the width of it and halved the depth of it, along with elongating the body to a Strad long scale, fourteen ¼ mm. So I gained essentially almost 10 millimeters in the top length, and back length, once again to support the low end”.
Sullivan took a lot of care with the selection of the wood for the 5-strings. “You might order 20 and return 19, you know. The German spruce tops on these two violins are incredible. I glued one up for an F5 about 8 years ago and I went, “no. Not gonna….” so I bookshelved it for a violin. The 5-string thing came up and I thought, “oh this will be perfect.” John looks for for very tight grain at least around the bridge area, but light in weight. “If you can find wood like that, you can increase the top thickness around the bridge area probably 15% but it only increases the weight around 8 percent. So you get it light and stiff, but responsive. And I added a little to the weight of the bass bar just in the sculpting of it”.
John’s most enjoyable activity was modifying the peg box. He elongated it for the extra peg. “It was fun for me trying to get a nice smooth curve with plenty of room for pegs. And I tapered the wall thickness at the nut so there’s a little more string clearance.” The result is one of the most lively and responsive 5-strings that this writer has played.
Jonathan Cooper’s famously impeccable workmanship has attracted a wide range of violinists and fiddlers. Jon has chosen to attack the 5-string problem by constructing violas with E strings, rather than violins with C strings. “…Just from a technical standpoint, you can’t get a violin body to produce a C fundamental. The violin actually doesn’t even have enough air resonance to produce the G string… what you’re hearing is overtones, just for the G string. So you really can’t get the C sound. If you’re using a pickup or a microphone it’s not that important. But I wanted to make something that was a true stand-alone acoustic instrument that would actually project. The only way that I could do that would be to make a larger instrument. And violas historically have had a wider range of designs than the violin, and they can be small.” Jon went back to a Brescian style body for his five-string violas, which was a flexible body design based on the builders of Maggini’s time and region. where the middle section of the instrument, the inner bouts, f-holes and bridge height, would maintain consistent size and proportions while the rest of the body could be made larger or smaller. “It’s nice to be able to go back and pick up an old method and say, it really is very flexible. You can change it at will and it works, which is pretty cool. Their [the Brescians’ construction] method was simple, very easy to execute and it would always hang together. So you can make a viola that’s 15 inches long, 16 inches long; they all sound good”.
This writer is currently enjoying 3 five string fiddles: a Dahlia, an excellent five-string conversion from noted fiddlemaker Robert Kogut, and the new instrument from the late John Sullivan, his last. With all the current experimentation and even larger manufacturers offering a 5 string option, one thing is for sure: the 5 string violin idea has caught on and is likely here to stay. People who play 5 strings seem to love them and don’t want to go back, Not all fives are successful instruments, but the ones which are, are phenomenal, and we will see more of them as makers discover reliable designs. Time will only tell how large a slice of the market 5-strings will command.
Darol Anger