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THE
upon us during the last months is great evidence
of the confidence which musicians have in York
instruments, and they are highly elated over the
prospects for a continuance of their growth
"BOY SCOUT" DRUM
One of the Popular Sellers with Buegeleisen &
Jacobson, New York—Band Instruments Also
in Demand—New Catalog Will Soon Be
Ready for Distribution to the Trade.
The drum business this spring with Buegeleisen
& Jacobson, 113 University Place, New York, is
considerably ahead of past seasons. The drum pro-
duced in the accompanying illustration has proven
one of the favorites. It is called the "Boy Scout,"
and judging from the demand has made an instant
hit with the trade.
The popular Victoria Brand drums, which are
handled by Buegeleisen & Jacobson, are also main-
taining a brisk activity. The line is always in
favor with first-class bands and orchestras and
has acquired a reputation which is bound to lead
to many future orders.
Business in the other departments of Buegeleisen
& Jacobson continues to break records. The com-
pany is on the eve of issuing its new catalog,
and, according to Samuel Buegeleisen, it will be one
of the biggest and most comprehensive catalogs
ever issued in the small goods trade.
WHY OLD VIOLINS ARE VALUABLE.
The Secrets of Violin Making Possessed by
the Old Masters, and Not the Materials Used
in the Instruments That Cause Them to
Bring Fabulous Prices—The Importance of
the Varnish in Perfecting Tone.
"How do you account for the extraordinary
prices which old violins by famous makers fetch
to-day?" was the question asked recently of a
famous collector who has gathered together many
valuable instruments. "Is it because materials
used by old makers are unobtainable now?"
"No," was the reply; "it is easy enough to get
good materials, but it is not so easy to discover
the secrets of the art of violin-making, possessed,
for instance, by Antonio Stradivari, the famous
violin-maker of Cremona. The materials with
which he made violins cost him but a few shil-
lings, but, whereas makers to-day turn out violins
by the hundred, he spent months upon one instru-
ment, and it is an historic fact that he sent a lot
of violins to England to be sold at £ 5 apiece,
?nd they had to be returned because they could
not be disposed of.
"Stradivari knew how to select properly seasoned
wood, in the first place. Three kinds of wood are
used in making the violin—maple for the back, the
split-wood sides and the neck; spruce pine for the
top, and ebony for the finger board, the tail piece
or stringholder and the pegs. The fine maple wood
is usually bought in Bohemia. It is very hard
wood and difficult to work. This maple wood
should be both resisting and elastic in order to
send back the vibrations produced by the top.
And for the top a spruce pine is chosen which
must be at the same time very firm and little
resinous; for the top must produce the greatest
number of vibrations possible. The best violin
tops come from Switzerland.
"Then, of course, much depends on the shape of
MUSIC TRADE
57
F?EVIEW
the instrument, and the beauty of a Stradivarius
is that it is built on a model which can be made
to speak in all tones. If it was clumsily and
badly made in the beginning there is no magic
that in time will remedy these defects. All the old
instruments—that is, the genuine ones, for there
are hundreds of fakes which are passed off as old
makes—are built on lines which have certainly been
successfully copied, but which fail to reach the
tone of the old violins simply because of some little
defect in the wood or the varnish.
"The violin to-day is practically the same instru-
ment as it was 300 years ago, and this in spite of
the fact that every violin-maker has at some time
in his career been possessed by an ambition to im-
prove on the violin as it stands. I have seen at
least 500 specimens of these experimental designs,
and some of them are the craziest notions that
ever hatched in the human brain. I have seen a
violin shapd like a triangle, violins with a set
of strings under the ordinary set, violins with a
metal comb inside such as you see in a musical
box, violins with double posts, violins with flat
tops, violins without any openings, and others
with openings of strange shapes. There is no end
to these wild imaginings; but the violin of the
twentieth century remains in principle the same
as that of the Italian inventor.
"But the real secret of the wonderful tone of
ardent violins lies in the varnish. The varnishing
is, perhaps, the most delicate part of violin build-
ing. The varnish must possess a great warmth of
tone, a fine transparency, and great solidity. It
should have a beautiful, warm, amber color ap-
proaching the purple orange, and must be free from
the shrill tint of the factory instruments. It is,
to a great extent, the varnish that gives the old
Italian violins their great value. These possess a
richness of tone compared to the orange-red of the
most beautiful paintings of the primitive painters
of the Italian and Flemish schools. Besides its
beauty, the varnish contributes to the sonorousness,
astonishing as this statement may appear.
"Every violin-maker who is worthy of the name
is sure he has a supremely good varnish, and
every man guards his own secret. But somehow
they do not seem to be able to find out the secret
of the varnish used by the violin-makers of cen-
turies ago.
"But it must not be overlooked that much de-
pends on the bow. It was a Frenchman—Tuort—
who was to the bow what Stradivari was to the
violin. Those old bows were made of snakewood,
iionwood, and several other varieties. Bows be-
come tempered—educated—with time and use, so
that a man's bow becomes almost as precious to
him as his fiddle itself."
OTTO SCHINDLER RETURNS FROM TRIP.
(Special to The Review.)
Boston, Mass., April 22, 1912/
Otto Schindler, of H. Schindler & Co., 121 Lam-
artine street, Jamaica Plain district, has returned
from a six weeks' business tour, which has taken
him to all the principal cities of this country be-
tween the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.
Mr. Schindler says that the company's line of
gut wound strings are enjoying unusual pros-
perity not only for themselves, but for the large
number of dealers in this country who are making
money selling them.
LATE PATENTS OFTRADE INTEREST.
(Special to The Review.)
Washington, D. G, April 22, 1912.
Ernest C. Schmidhofer, Minneapolis, Minn., is
the owner of patent No. 1,022,509, on a horn, which
was granted this week. The main objects.of this
invention are to provide a horn having improved
mechanism adapted to provide tones of varying
pitch; to provide a toy wind instrument having
very simple and durable means for varying its
tone, and to provide a very cheap and simple de-
vice adapted for use as a toy to provide varying
sounds, and which is equally well adapted to use
as a sounding horn for vehicles.
A patent (No. 1,022,031) on a guitar has this
week been granted to August Larson, Chicago,
111. This invention relates to improvements in
guitars and has special reference to those instru-
ments which are known as "harp guitars," in which
there is a wide range in and great difference be-
tween the size and length of the strings. A guitar
which is sufficiently heavy in construction and
large in size for the larger strings having a rela-
tively low number of vibrations will not be well
proportioned for a light string having a relatively
high number of vibrations; and the objects of the
invention are, first, the provision of an instru-
ment equally suitable for both large and small
strings; second, the construction of the instru-
ment so that the music from the large and small
strings will be properly modulated and combined;
and third, the strengthening of various details of
construction and the general improvement of the
instrument.
Do you zvish to make five dollars? Then send
your ideas upon leading trade topics, embodied in
two hundred and fifty words, to The Revietv. You
will find full particulars elsezvhere in this issue.
Van Sant & Reynolds have opened a new piano
store in Santt Monica, Cal.
Schindler Strings
H~ Schindler Service
= Satisfaction
Satisfaction is the " G-String"
of the Huge Schindler Business.
Shipments made semi-monthly or monthly to insure fresh-
ness.
Ask us for Special Plan "R" with a sample string—sent to
jobbers ONLY.
H. SCHINDLER & CO.
Jamaica Plain District
BOSTON, MASS.