Annie john full book5/11/2023 ![]() Stainer famously pasted a label there claiming to have been a pupil of Amati. ![]() The fascination for me is that the top-block has always been a good place to plant discreet messages to other violin makers peering in through an empty endpin hole. ![]() But spruce or pine continued to be the usual choice elsewhere. Stradivari went for the more homogeneous willow as his material. And then, softwood splits very easily, especially if you’re pushing a dovetailed neck joint in a little too hard or hammering a handful of nails through it. If you accidentally fit the block upside down, as it were, with the angle of the grain in the wrong way, it’s seriously difficult to make the neck joint. The neck root goes through the top ribs and glues itself to the back. But the Brescians managed without anything. The Amatis generally used spruce – scraps from the workshop floor, with three or four iron nails banged through them into the neck. ![]() Some have inscriptions, some have nail holes or peg holes. The pain.īut still, top-blocks have interesting stories to tell. All these things can happen and not reveal themselves until you’re actually fitting the neck. Hidden knots, twisted grain, even upside-down grain. What can possibly go wrong? Ah, I could tell you tales of top-blocks. The top-block. Another simple piece of straight-grained wood, faced off nice and square, a straightforward task. This article is from the May 2013 issue of The Strad ![]()
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