Sorry, this will be a long one. But it’s a serious issue, because without strings, there is no Violoncello da Spalla either. It was postponed several times, because it’s not easy to write about things you are so deeply involved with. Frequently asked question: Isn’t the Violoncello da Spalla a Baroque instrument? Why do you use modern strings? Like the violin, the Violoncello da Spalla was born in the Baroque era, but today it’s used with a variety of strings, depending on the kind of music performed and, especially, the voice the performer is searching for. Among our customers, we have musicians who have a professional modern musician job but use the Violoncello da Spalla with gut strings, and others who perform mainly baroque music with modern strings, as well as others who happily mix and match. Unlike the violin, the Violoncello da Spalla is not ascribable to a label, it is not baroque or modern. It personifies the freedom of expression, the pure research of a personal voice, the joy of music performance through access to a super wide repertoire without being ascribed to a fixed role. Which strings are available for the Violoncello da Spalla? Until now we had the choice of 3 manufacturers: Aquila Corde Armoniche Atelier Boussoir Thomastik Infeld The breaking news is that Thomastik Infeld strings for Violoncello da Spalla are discontinued. The breaking news is that Thomastik strings for Violoncello da Spalla are discontinued. If you are interested in buying from the remaining stock, you should write to Mariana Leszko. Eliakim Boussoir is still offering a range of strings: he doesn’t produce pure gut himself, so he offers the set of historical basses (3 strings) with gut core, a set of historical basses with silk core, and a set of 5 strings balanced as a modern set, with silk core. We personally love them all. I recently got a message from him introducing a new string: a gut core C with tungsten and silver winding. He also said he will need to raise his prices soon, because he needs to restock metal wires (we’ll be back on this serious issue). Atelier Boussoir recently introduced a new C string with gut core and tungsten and silver winding. Aquila Corde is offering an historical set with gut-core basses and pure gut trebles, and a modern set with synthetic core. There is also the option of the “Red” strings, which are synthetic treble strings with a special winding to allow a good grip and response. We’ll be shortly back to Aquila’s sets. If two years ago we already thought that having only 3 choices was not enough, not safe enough to guarantee the continuity of the instrument, now we feel we have to act as we’re potentially facing a real crisis. Making strings is not the first job for Eliakim: he is a luthier and a teacher at Mirecourt violinmaking school. The requests for strings are already saturating his “free” time. Mimmo Peruffo, head of Aquila Corde, despite being retired is always at work: the company is big, making several different kinds of strings, and every day is a battle to solve different issues, from supplies and employees issues, to production settings and quality, to customer care and orders delivery, there is a lot to deal with everyday. The geopolitical situation of this decade, from the pandemic to the wars and duties, is heavily affecting what is otherwise imagined as a traditional craft fundamental for the art of music. Why has Thomastik Infeld discontinued the Violoncello da Spalla strings? Thomastik is a huge company. They need numbers. When I was at Aquila we were battling every week with the accountants, because they wanted us to discontinue gut production, as it was not profitable enough. It didn’t matter (to them) that gut string making was the core mission of the company. Between mapping the availability of good row material, laws and regulations changing all the time for the trade and detention of goods made from livestock’s, transportation of fast deceasing materials or values -gut and silver-, the production taking more than half of the space in the facility, employees needing constant attention because they are working with natural materials subject to changes in quality, and, finally, customers needing attention because a gut string set is every time a custom order, tailored on the specific instrument or musician, all of this took probably more than half of the resources of the company, but this rough number was far from being matched by a corresponding profit. As making ukulele and guitar strings was providing bigger numbers with a much more standardized process, the consultants wanted us to dismiss the gut string production and dedicate the company only to the modern one. There was also a daily internal battle, with the managers always trying -without our consent- to dismiss the small distributors, old friends and luthiers, in favour of big ones that made numbers easily, giving a less attent service to the customers but also less work to the office employees… This long digression on my personal story, to explain why a string company is resistant to making strings for a niche instrument. The more so if it’s a big company that is ruled by a team of managers and not anymore by the enthusiasm of the founder. For a highly automated company like Thomastik, making strings for the Violoncello da Spalla means stopping production on one machine, changing the settings (something that requires the intervention of a technician), making it work for half an hour to produce some dozens of the strings needed, then repeat for the other strings, maybe change machine if the core is of a different kind… It’s probably one full day of work for a couple of people, at the cost of losing a full day of regular production (that could amount to close to 800 strings). The high price of the single da spalla string still doesn’t compensate for that loss. To this, you should add the time of office employees to manage the orders, and the very long inventory period (the strings that are now going out of stock were the second production batch, made in 2022). Years ago they were selling with a minimum order of 12 sets (which meant roughly 6000€ in one purchase), then, after pressure from the market, they set the minimum to 3 sets and recently they took out the minimum order and allowed also single strings purchase. However, they never did the fundamental step of making them available to distributors in the world. The only way to order is through the office manager and technical and development assistant Mariana Lesko. This made Violoncello da Spalla sales more difficult: how can you propose to a shop to carry an instrument when they cannot carry the strings for it? It makes dealers cautious. Now, the Thomastik management team decided to dismiss those strings, which, they said, never gave satisfaction and only brought trouble. Let me add that while they did, several years ago, a great job with Sergey Malov to design the first set, then they didn’t sit at a table again with Sergey to get his feedback and review the work. This would be much needed after a few years, with the growth of experience and research of the possibilities of the Violoncello da Spalla! Now, seeing that even Sergey is trying different strings, they feel their efforts are not rewarded. Anyway, I believe that the real core of the decision is numbers. The Violoncello da Spalla is not comparable in numbers even to the Viola (…yet! 💪🤪). What’s the matter with Violoncello da Spalla strings? Apart from being a niche there is a technical issue. This will be techy, I will try to make it simple. The violin and the cello are perfectly proportioned instruments: at the time where gut was the only option for strings, was it plain or loaded or as a core for a wound string, they were using a vibrating length allowing the first treble string and the last bass to perform at their best, employing four strings tuned by fifths. With the technology available, if you want to go higher, you need to shorten the instrument, loosing power and response in the basses, and if you want to go lower, you need to go with a longer instrument, loosing the possibility to tune your first string likewise as it will break. It’s not a cohincindence that also another family of instruments like viols even if employing more strings, it was always in a range of between two octaves. This are the physical rules of a same-length instruments. Harps, theorbos, archlutes work by changing the length. Back to our Violoncello da Spalla. Its length is roughly 2/3 of that of a big cello. If we stop with our thumb the strings of a cello in fourth position, we have four strings playing at the length of a Violoncello da Spalla with the tuning of the first fourth of a Violoncello da Spalla. So, when gut was the only option, a normal cello set was what was needed for the first four of the cello da spalla. And we believe this was a huge push for “standardizing” this measure of instrument. Modern materials, like synthetic and steel cores, and all different wires for windings, had made things more complicated. But don’t you think they increased much the possibilities: putting it veeeeery simply, they copy the function of old gut strings, and the tension is what is needed to make a string work under a bow at a certain note at a certain length. You cannot go higher and higher, because the tension will increase on your instrument and be too much for it, and you cannot go lower and lower for the same reason: the instrument was designed to support a certain amount of tension. Amplification is what comes at help in the case of six and seven strings violins. However, this huge amount of complications introduced by the widening of the possibilities of combinations between the materials available today into the same phisical rules of the past, is what designer string makers have in mind when I try to explain them the simple fact that th
