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

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.

I wondered about that myself. They need to try the bows in something like this:

 
I wondered about that myself. They need to try the bows in something like this:

Or you could just lie to them and see if they can tell the difference.
Mix them up and let the player come up with the best, would be my choice.

Here's the 'your part time job at Mickey D's' Shitzuola bow vs the 'more-money-than-you'll-ever-see-in-your-lifetime' Expansiola bow, which do you prefer?

Question is, does the audience know?
 
Last edited:
My violin buddies again; The Hutchins Consort
profile_image.jpg

The tiny violin, far right, rear row,...
I spent some spare time before a concert sampling that little thing, in the same hall as that photo, sampling it with an exquisite recording front end. That hall is suggested as one of the finest acoustic halls in the world.
We had him running that thing as high up the frequency range as he could take it. That thing is so far smaller than a regular violin, its just silly. You can compare it to a normal size violin, at rear-center.
Its high string is NASA rocket science wire, and exceedingly expensive. It has to hold a tremendous load at such a fine diameter.
In sampling it, we followed it on a response graph, and at a point where we all declared that we couldn't hear it anymore, it was just at just under 14khz. At that point, all we could hear was the rosin-coated hairs on the string. Those things sounded awful.
 
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.
View attachment 1119740


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.
I have a recording, thank you!
I'll have to check it out again with this as background.
 
I would say that the difference was greater between the $500 bow and all the rest. I think that the 160K bow sounded best, but the difference between it and the other two expensive bows vas very slight and could merely be her recording. The cheap bow had slightly noisier articulation and didn't seem to quite pull the same sound quality from the violin. I would also say that the difference overall from worst to best was slight, and none of them sounded "bad".
I have played violin, viola, piano, oboe and trumpet over the years. I have a brother who is nearly finished with his doctorate in violin performance, and I've played in both youth and adult symphonic groups, so I've heard a lot of violin music during my life.

Would the difference in cost be worth it? Not to me, but the way my violin playing brother talks about violins, maybe he would think so!!
 
She think she moved her eyebrows more with the $500 one, so it's the best.
I wonder how the cheapest bow will sound in 200 years.
 
As pathetic as it may sound, many famous soloists spend a lifetime searching for "their bow. As a result, a professional musician's collection can include dozens of variations.
A buddy of mine does a lot of buying and selling of all kinds of used musical instruments. Quite often when he opens a violin case the bow is worth more than the instrument.
 
Back
Top Bottom