Violin Bows $500 bow vs $40,000 bow vs $90,000 bow vs $160,000 bow

Not so subtle when playing the fast passages. Unless she's playing differently, there are huge differences between all of them. I wonder what aspects of the bows contribute to the differences - other than the materials used to make them.
 
"Here, let me play my 1690 Stradivarius..." :rflmao:

All kidding aside, I am not a violin player, nor do I listen to a lot of classical music, but in the slower passage I couldn't hear much of a tonal/resonant/clarity difference between the cheap bow and the $160,000 bow at all. However, I noticed that the cheap one was significantly noisier. Sort of like a scratchy/chalky/friction-y sound with each bow stroke. You can especially hear it in parts of the second half of the slow passage played with the cheap bow. IDK if that has to do with the quality of the hair or the application of the rosin, but I noticed that chalky scratchiness right away.

As for the faster passages, the difference between the cheapest and most expensive bow are pretty apparent. The cheap bow is a little duller and not quite expressive in its treble response. However, the midrange tonality between the cheap bow and the $40,000 and $90,000 ones were very similar, but what separated them slightly was that the more expensive ones brought out a bit more resonance from the body. This could be boiled down to the individual strokes of the bow in each performance though. Hard to say. However the most expensive bow was another story. It had much more volume and power, more resonance was induced from the body in all registers, and there was much more treble presence. Notes just seemed to jump out of the violin with authority.
 
The $500 bow sounded better when using my $20,000 DAC.

Yet the $160,000 bow was superior when lifting my $40,000 speaker cables 4" of the floor using $5,000 cable risers.
 
What could possibly justify $160000 for a bow???

Make 320 $500 bows and pick out the best one!?!
 
I had this exact discussion this past weekend, and, placed the question to this bunch, accordingly.
Turns out the far bass bow is probably a $7k bow; said to be 1900'ish
The violins are a harmonically voice-matched octet set +1 extra alto violin (the two ladies, seated, far right; violas on a stick).
The bows are a mixed lot, per each players feel.
DSCN4672.jpg


They had a good chuckle over it.
My take,... its not unlike the special flavor cables vs. plain vanilla. But it hardly raised much more than an eyebrow.
 
Last edited:
When my daughter was playing cello the guideline quoted to me was you need to spend 50% of the cost of your cello on a bow. Thankfully I got a great deal on a $4,500 cello (used for $350) when she moved to a full-sized cello so I was able to justify a cheaper composite bow!

I doubt that's what was meant by the guideline but it saved me a lot of money.
 
Oh oh oh oh oh!

Antique value.

I was thinking new items.
As in, what was it made of and how long did it take?

I don’t think solid gold would cost that much.

Very few Stradivarius violins are priced only for antique value. Most are played frequently. If you're playing with an instrument of that caliber, I would assume you're going to get the best bow available, regardless of price.
 
Carbon fiber with an ivory frog ...

... strung with unicorn hair of course ... ;-}
 
Very few Stradivarius violins are priced only for antique value. Most are played frequently. If you're playing with an instrument of that caliber, I would assume you're going to get the best bow available, regardless of price.

Yes, I meant that in a broader way.
Like historical or rarity.
I was thinking new manufacture price at first and boggling at that.

Like $100000 turntables or $250000 speakers being made and offered today.
 
The violin set that I posted about above,... is called the Hutchins Consort New Violin Family Octet.
They are the lifes work of Dr. Carleen Hutchins, as put forth in a challenge by Henry Brant, in the late 40's. He said, fix the violins, and I'll write a concerto for them.
She did, and he did. But it took her 40 years to do so. I'm not certain, but, I think I recorded the debut of this piece? I'll need to dig into my records/recordings.

In creating that set of violins, they literally dissected and drilled holes in a Strad violin, to find out what made it work.
That was the starting point, to find out what made the basic violin what it was, and, find its limitations (higher frequency than attainable, and lower ranges), and fill the holes in the viol family.
Their intention was to make the Strad the center point, and surround it with 7 voice matched violins to compliment it. They quickly found out that the Strad struggled to keep up with the rest of the Consort, and set out to create a replacement for the Strad, calling it the Mezzo, or, He-Man violin. They finally ended up with the eight harmonically voice matched violins.
A string quartet is typically a mismatched assemblage of different viol family instruments; not all are violins. And there are gaping frequency range holes between instruments, and, varying harmonic voice imbalances inherent, and present.

So, there are eight sets of eight instruments. Two are owned by The Hutchins Consort, one on the west coast, in Encinitas, and the other on the east coast, in New York. The East Coast set is infrequently played. That leaves six more sets; one owned by the British Royal family, and the rest are in art and music museum collections.
They are the first set of harmonically voice matched violins that completely cover the entire range of written music, in the entire 500+ year history of violin making. They range from disappearing dog note top end, to huge chest thumping bottom end.
To say these are unique, rare, and priceless is an understatement. But, the bow choice is completely dependent on the players own needs and styles.
 
Last edited:
Same ensemble. The bow in the bass bow pocket.
The guy playing the bass, in the hat, was playing, and, in the second to last song, the bow broke. The "pointed end", the far end from the hand, broke off, and the hairs went limp. He needed to bow for the next song. So, he got ahold of a hand full of hairs down at the opposite end of the bow, and he played it with the frog end outward, and *hand tensioned the hairs.
DSCN2961_zpsumil7cos.jpg

* which brings us to the Persian fiddle bows, which, like the Persian fiddles, are precursory to the western violins.
Their bows are hand tensioned; essentially a dowel with hairs attached to either end, and all hand tensioned.
This is a Persian bow. Shown is the hair side. They are supported by what is, as suggested, a dowel, with end caps and attachment features. The tensioning is all done by hand, as needed.
kamancheh-bow-standart-.jpg


and the post-disclaimer,...
I'm not even slightly a musician. Somehow in this life, I've endd up recording a whole lot of different violins from all over the world, and am just saying what I've seen.
 
Seems to me that you’d want the player to not know which now they were playing otherwise they might unconsciously play a little better the better the bow was.

Maybe they did that - I didn’t watch the video, but had that thought when I saw the thread.
 
Back
Top Bottom