Tag: Don Rickert
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The Solution to the Chin Rest Problem on Backpacker Violins and Fiddles
Our continuous improvement efforts related to the Backpacker and Travel Fiddles by Don Rickert Lutherie (the Neil Gow 21C2 Travel Violin, the NEW Neil Gow 22C Travel Violin, Adventurer IId Travel Violin and Mountaineer Backpacker Fiddle) has kept us on a relentless search for a truly usable chin rest solution. Customers who otherwise love these small, durable and sonorous instruments have…
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The Use of Tuned Porting in Modern Stringed Instruments
Tuned porting has been a crical aspect of audio system speaker enclosure design for many years. Only recently, has the idea of porting beyond what is provided by the sound holes, been considered in the design of musical instruments, paricularly stringed instruments, plucked as well as bowed. With stringed musical instruments, porting refers to strategically placing extra…
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Pochettes, Backpacker Fiddles and Ergonomics: A Short Primer
What is a Pochette? A pochette was a violin-like instrument of the 17th and 18th Centuries that was small enough in girth to fit into a longish sheath sewn into one's coat. The sheath came to be known by the instrument's name: "pochette". This is where the modern English word "pocket" comes from. Pochettes were…
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Is it a Tailpiece or a Chin Rest? How About BOTH!
The Tailpiece-Chin Rest Combination from Dov Schmidt Dov Schmidt, himself a violinist and conductor, is also one of the most innovative suppliers and inventor of ground-breaking bowed string instrument accessories such as chin rests and tailpieces (http://www.dov-music.com/). We have begun using Dov Schmidt Harp-style tailpieces on a number of Don Rickert Lutherie instruments. These tailpieces…
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Tattooed Fiddles by Don Rickert Design
Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Do you want a "full body suit"…not on you, but for your violin or fiddle? We have not figured out fiddle body piercing yet, but we are working on it. Read on… The decoration of musical instruments has been done for hundreds of years. Such decoration has included inlay work of…
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Tatooed Violins and Fiddles (New Photo Albums)
Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Don Rickert Lutherie is gearing up to offer custom "tatooing", more properly called "rosing" or inkwork decoration for a number of our musical instruments. This service will be available via our Adventurous Muse Store. We will have a proper article about what we are doing and the history behind…
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Why the F-Type Mandolin Dominates Bluegrass – Flatirons Dominate Celtic (UPDATE)
Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Have you ever seen a Bluegrass mandolin player playing anything but an F-Type or a Celtic player ever playing an F-Type (the photo with the scroll on the left). There are reasons. Read on… Musicians in just about every genre except Bluegrass, including Old-Time (lots of F-Styles and…
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A Brief History of Flatiron-Type Mandolins (UPDATE)
Please visit the Don Rickert Musician Shop. Flat-Top Flatiron-Style Mandolin by Don Rickert Design (now Don Rickert Lutherie) and available from the Adventurous Muse Store is of the general type known as either "pancake" or "flariron". It has that mellow, yet still loud and powerful sound sought by Celtic (both Irish and Scottish) players, as well as…
