Admittance Measurements of 25 High Quality Violins

The present investigation was made with one question in mind: Do high quality violins have properties that cannot be found in violins of moderate quality? The violins of the Järnåker Foundation (of the Royal Swedish Academy of Music) offer a unique possibility to seek the answer to this question – the foundation has a number of high quality (soloist quality) violins in the Stockholm area. Twenty-five of these violins were tested in the laboratory by means of admittance measurements at the bridge, level and phase. Thereby it was found that the C3-resonance was dominating and is probably a major parameter of the low frequency response of a high quality violin. Comparisons with other investigations support the view that the quality criteria developed earlier are applicable and that the main body resonance, the B1-resonance and the C3-resonance are the same.