How Fitting?

One of the decisions I have to make is what type of violin fittings to use for the 5-string fiddle.  Fittings are the accessories that go with the main body of the violin to complete it.  These include the pegs, tailpiece, chin rest, and end pin.  Now fittings come in all kinds of materials / finishes / styles, so narrowing this down to a nice complementary set is a bit of a challenge.   Just Google "violin fittings" and you can see how vast the choices are for this.  You can find fittings in ebony, boxwood, rosewood, teak, tetul, mahogany, maple, olive wood, paddock, pernambuco, tulip, snakewood, crabwood, teneo, and tigerwood to name a few of the wood options.  There are also composite materials available as well.

So how do we narrow this down?  Well, we do have some constraints which limit the choices somewhat.  First, it's a 5-string violin so we know we need 5 pegs and a tailpiece which is made for 5 strings.  Most of what you can find is made for traditional 4 strings, so 90% of what is available isn't going to work.  Also, choosing whether to go with a traditional black ebony look or not is a basic decision I have to make to help narrow down the decision.  My current violin has boxwood fittings which generally match the overall color of the instrument.  I lean towards not doing the black ebony look, but the Wittner 5-string tailpiece that Martin usually uses for his 5-string violins only come in black and they are composite material as shown to the right.

The pegs are also a bit more complicated if I want to go with the latest technology.  Yes, there is some technology in this space which seems a little odd given that it looks like just a wood peg.  Guitars and other modern string instruments have had metal geared tuners for many years, but the metal gears would seriously alter the traditional look of a violin.  Well, a couple of designs have emerged in recent years which hide the gears either in the head of the peg or in the shaft.  In essence, the shaft does not turn in the peg box like a traditional peg which is turned to tune but then must stay in place via friction at the correct pitch.  These new type of pegs stay fixed in the peg box and then an internal shaft turns via geared increments so the turning is very smooth and very precise.  There are two types of these pegs on the market.

The first type is the Wittner FineTune peg.  It has the gearing inside the peg head and as such, must be made of composite material just like their tailpiece.  They also only come in black.  So this is an option if I go with a black ebony color scheme.





The second type is the Knilling Perfection Planetary peg.  These have the gearing imbedded in the shaft  instead of the peg head.  The nice thing about these is that it allows an actual wood head to be mounted on the peg.  These come in composite black, black ebony, or rosewood.  They come in a Hill (nub) or a Swiss (plain) style.




I really like the idea of these geared pegs and I like the option of being able to still achieve the look of wood pegs, but with the latest technology too.  So the Knilling Perfection seems like the best choice to achieve the form, function, and look I want.  I decided to go with the Swiss style as I think the more traditional Hill style in 5 pegs might look a little odd.  So this pretty much nails down the type of wood as Rosewood since the pegs only come in that for a wood look.

Now that we have determined Rosewood as our wood material, we can narrow our search for 5 string tailpieces to Rosewood tailpieces.  I found a nice website that has just about every possible type of fitting you can want.  As expected, most of the tailpieces are 4-string tailpieces, but they do have some 5-string ones too.  There are French, Hill, Baroque, and then a very unique looking Schmidt Harp style that was very intriguing to me.  The top of the tailpiece is shaped like the top of the harp giving the lower strings more string length which is supposed to enhance the vibration.  Sounds logical to me.  Given they have a model in Rosewood, I chose to go with it.

The chin rest is actually more straightforward since they come in the same types of wood as the other fittings.  However, there are so many shapes, sizes, mounts, and positions that you could literally customize the exact feel of the chin rest against your chin.  Given that I've been playing my current violin for 40+ years, I figured I'll just go for a very familiar feel and try to match the type of chin rest I use now.  It is a Guarneri style and it comes with a center Hill mount.  

So these are my selections for fittings.  I asked Martin to go ahead and order them, but unfortunately, the tail piece is not in stock.  But Martin said he'll go ahead and order an ebony one and then custom make one in Rosewood that matches it.  Nice to have your own luthier be that flexible!  I think it will look quite stunning when complete. 

Next week, we will show how the boards are shaping up.