Performance of three violins made in Mexico evaluated through standard measurements from a legendary violin

Abstract

A set of Mexican violins handmade using traditional woods (i.e. spruce for the soundboard, maple for the body, and ebony for the fingerboard) were studied. Standard mobility measurements of these instruments were obtained, and the sound of each violin was recorded when a professional musician played a Bruch Concerto opening excerpt. One of the violins showed a mobility with high harmonic content remarking strong components of high frequencies, resembling the response of old Italian violins, and particularly one made by Stradivari; its sound was the brightest of the set. Meanwhile, other violin exhibited an opposite performance, with weak components of high frequency and having the darkest sound. The performance of the third violin was located between the other two, both in mobility and in its sound. The sound recordings are available for download; so these discussions can be actively judged by the reader. These Mexican violins covered a considerably different range of performance, so there is no reason to consider that violins made in Mexico could have some kind of limitation; quite the opposite, the results of this work show that obtaining a desired dynamical behavior (quantified by mobility measurements) of a new violin is totally feasible.