Violin Construction and Mechanics - Strings

Strings

Violins have four open strings: G, D, A, and E. The four strings run from a tailpiece attached to the base, cross a wooden bridge, continue towards the neck of the instrument running parallel to the fingerboard, and connect to the pegbox located at the very top of the violin. The strings are wound around four tuning pegs that are mounted sideways through holes in the pegbox. The bridge of the violin helps to hold the strings in place, while the pegs maintain the tension necessary to produce vibration.

Strings were first made of sheep's intestines (called "catgut"), stretched, dried and twisted. Contrary to popular belief, violin strings were never made of actual cat's intestines. Plain gut strings are used in both modern and "period" music though in recent years the "baroque" historically accurate performances players seem to use them more often than those musicians who play later period music or play baroque music in a "modern" style. Gut strings are made by a number of specialty string makers as well as some large stringmaking companies.

In the 19th century (and even earlier though not yet prevalent) metal windings were developed for the lower-pitched gut strings. Wound strings avoid the flabby sound of a light-gauge string at low tension. Heavier plain-gut strings at a suitable tension are inconvenient to play and difficult to fit into the pegbox.

There are many claims made that gut strings are difficult to keep in tune. In fact for those who actually have experience with them, plain gut strings are quite stable from a tuning standpoint. Wound gut do have more instability of tuning due to the different response to moisture and heat between the winding and the core, and from string to string. Some players use olive oil on gut strings to extend their playing life, and improve tuning stability by reducing the strings' sensitivity to humidity. Gut strings tend to hold their sound quality nicely right up until they fail, or become excessively worn.

Modern strings are most commonly either a stranded synthetic core wound with various metals, or a steel core, which may be solid or stranded, often wound with various other metals. With low-density cores such as gut or synthetic fiber, the winding allows a string to be thin enough to play, while sounding the desired pitch at an appropriate tension. The winding of steel strings affects their flexibility and surface properties, as well as mass. Strings may be wound with several layers, in part to control the damping of vibrations, and influence the "warmth" or "brightness" of the string by manipulating the strength of its overtones.

The core may be synthetic filaments, solid metal, or braided or twisted steel filaments. The uppermost E string is usually solid steel, either plain or wound with aluminium in an effort to prevent "whistling." Gold plating delays corrosion of the steel and may also reduce whistling. Stainless steel gives a slightly different tone. Synthetic-core strings, the most popular of which is Perlon (a trade name for stranded nylon) combine some of the tonal qualities of gut strings with greater longevity and tuning stability. They are also much less sensitive to changes in humidity than gut strings, and less sensitive to changes in temperature than all-metal strings. Solid-core metal strings are stiff when newly replaced, and tend to go out of tune quickly.

While some gut strings still use a knot to secure the tail end in the slot of the tailpiece, most modern strings use a "ball", a small bead often made of bronze, for that purpose. A frequent exception is the E string, which may be had with either a ball or loop end, since the smallest E-string fine tuners hold the tail of the string on a single small hook.

The price of different string types varies dramatically; gut and gut-core strings are typically the most expensive, followed by leading synthetic core brands, and student steel strings at the lowest price range. Natural gut strings (without the metal windings) are quite inexpensive, especially for the e and a strings. The longevity of strings (all types) is highly variable and is influenced by style of play, chemistry of perspiration and its interaction with the string material, presence of fingernails, frequency of play etc. Some players have trouble with certain brands of strings, or one particular string from a brand but not with others.

The character of the sound produced by the strings can be adjusted quite markedly through the selection of different types of strings. The most noticeable divisions of sound quality for violins is steel, artificial gut ("perlon" core etc.), wound gut, and plain gut. The wound gut tend to have a mellow sound, as do many of the artificial strings, though other artificial core strings are specifically designed to be "bright". Steel and plain gut are both rather bright (full of overtones) but in distinctly different ways: you can tell the difference and yet each is more lively or bright typically than the wound soft-core and wound-gut strings. Certain styles of music have come to be played with certain types of strings, yet there is no hard and fast rule in this respect as each musician is looking for his or her sound. (Country fiddling is often on steel or all-metal; orchestral is often wound (gut or artificial) with a steel e; soloists are often like the orchestra; baroque or early music may be played rather more than romantic pieces, on plain gut.)