ADJUSTMENT TO CHANGE

The method of connecting an instrument’s neck to its body has undergone seismic changes since the Baroque era. Joseph Curtin analyses the ancient and modern procedures, and examines the benefits offered by fixing an adjustable neck

Unlike the rest of a violin, the neck and fingerboard are designed to be touched. Players are exquisitely sensitive to their contours, and for the violin maker, getting these right is both technically challenging and aesthetically satisfying. This article focuses on how the neck connects with the body – which may seem to be the least interesting thing about it. Yet this intricate joint has played a surprisingly important role in the violin’s development, as Roger Hargrave has persuasively argued (‘Evolutionary Road’, The Strad, February 2013). This article revisits the Baroque and modern necksets, considers the problems that are solved and created by each, and then explores the possibilities for an altogether different approach: the adjustable neck.

With the modern neckset, the heel is mortised into the assembled instrument body (figure 1). Considerable skill is required to chalk-fit the four gluing surfaces while keeping the fingerboard centred and at the correct projection – ‘projection’ being the upward tilt of the fingerboard, which determines bridge height. The mortise itself is a variation on the dovetail, a strong, reliable joint used by woodworkers since antiquity. Cremonese makers, who were certainly familiar with the dovetail, chose a different way of doing things.

FIGURE 1 The modern neck is mortised and then glued into the top-block

COURTESY JOSEPH CURTIN

Where the modern neckset is a single operation, the Baroque version divides it into several smaller steps distributed throughout the making process. Once the rib garland is off the form, the neck heel is fitted to the ribs above the top-block, then nailed and glued in place. The outline of the ribs is then traced on to the back wood, at which point any deviation from centredness can be remedied by swivelling the neck a little.

Doing so creates slight asymmetries in the body outline.

Studies show that symmetry is attractive in a human face – and that most faces have some degree of asymmetry. You could say that the Baroque process ‘humanises’ the outline, lending it a charm that a perfectly symmetrical instrument might lack.

But even without these added deviations, there is no danger of sterility. Small asymmetries accrue during the making process thanks to irregularities in the carving of the blocks, the bending of the ribs, the tracing of the outline and the figure of the wood. The old Italians took pains to make their forms symmetrical, and we don’t know whether they considered process-related asymmetries a blessing or a curse. We also don’t know whether the extreme asymmetries sometimes seen in instruments by Guarneri ‘del Gesù’, for example, were the result of freely expressed artistic impulses, or a frustrating struggle with failing abilities. What we do know is that the Baroque neckset had consequences for the look of the instrument body, while the modern one does not. Aesthetics aside, the practical advantage of the Baroque process was that the fingerboard, f-holes and bridge remained centred despite distortions in the outline.

Projection was addressed at a later stage by adjusting the angle of the underside of the fingerboard.

What seem jarring, at least in hindsight, are the nails. They did offer an effective method for holding the neck firmly against the ribs while the glue dried, but a clamp would have done the job, and it would have avoided the extra step of pre-drilling holes for the nails, which would otherwise split the top-block and neck. A more likely explanation relates to the innate fragility of the joint itself, especially when the gluing surfaces are imperfectly fitted. The joint would hold with the instrument assembled and strung up, since string tension holds the neck forcibly against the top-block, and the innate strength of the neck-to-button joint locks things in place (as in figure 2). But if someone were to knock the front of the scroll against a hard surface inadvertently, the shock of the impact amplified by the leverage of the neck could easily open the glue joint and snap off the button. Three or four nails, though hardly an elegant solution, do make the instrument more accident-proof. This would be especially true if the nails were set at converging angles, as shown in a recent study of Stradivari’s ‘Messiah’ (‘Secrets of the “Messiah”’, The Strad, January 2021). The angled nails create a skeletal emulation of a dovetail, which derives its strength from the angling of its walls.

One beauty of the Baroque fingerboard is the way its sculpted underbelly extends from the neck heel in a classic cantilever design. The aesthetic difficulty comes at the intersection of the top, neck and fingerboard. It is almost painful to see the various attempts shown in figure 3 at bringing these lines gracefully together. The most successful, at least to my eye, has the now-familiar vertical nick (seen here in the Girolamo Amati). It would have been still more successful if the neck were inserted a few millimetres into the top (emulated digitally in figure 4), instead of dodging awkwardly around it.

FIGURE 2 Original neck and fingerboard of a 1613 violino piccolo by Girolamo Amati. The neck heel is nailed and glued on to the outside of the ribs at the top-block

NATIONAL MUSIC MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA. AMATI, BILL WILLROTH SR

ONE BEAUTY OF THE BAROQUE FINGERBOARD IS THE WAY ITS UNDERBELLY EXTENDS FROM THE NECK HEEL IN A CLASSIC CANTILEVER DESIGN

FIGURE 3 Necksets for (left–right) the 1613 G. Amati violino piccolo; a 1664 viola by Andrea Guarneri; and a half-sized Lorenzo Storioni violin from 1793

NATIONAL MUSIC MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA. AMATI, GUARNERI, STORIONI: BILL WILLROTH SR.

WITHOUT THE NAILS, A BAROQUE NECK WOULD HAVE BEEN SIMPLER TO REMOVE AND RESET THAN A MODERN ONE

Were these makers concerned that cutting into the top would make it more susceptible to cracks? That would be a worry only if the inset interrupted the purfling (it would not), and only if they purfled under the fingerboard in the first place (they did not, at least not all the way, as shown in figure 5). Whatever their reasoning, they were stuck with the more difficult job of notching into the neck to accommodate the top.

Despite their fragility, violins remain playable for centuries because almost anything that goes wrong can be fixed. The easier the repair, the more likely the instrument’s survival.

The downfall of the Baroque neck was, in Hargrave’s words, ‘its virtual irreversibility’. Without the nails, a Baroque neck would have been simpler to remove and reset than a modern one. With them, it is extraordinarily difficult. But other factors doomed the Baroque neck. As players began staking out the higher positions, the sheer girth of neck and fingerboard became problematic. Not for Paganini, perhaps, who kept the Baroque neck on ‘Il Cannone’. But for violinists with shorter fingers and less flexible hands, a more streamlined design was needed, especially at the heel. Cutting back the Baroque heel would weaken the area catastrophically; moreover, it would expose the remains of the nails, as in figure 6. The modern neckset retains strength in the heel by extending it into the top-block, where it is out of the player’s way. For the design to work, a slender fingerboard is required. As it happened, colonial plundering ensured a plentiful supply of ebony, a wood whose native stiffness allows a sturdy fingerboard of compact dimensions.

FIGURE 4 The Girolamo Amati neckset, digitally modified to emulate insetting the neck heel into the top, but not the ribs

We don’t know who came up with the first modern neck: perhaps the Mantegazzas (one of the earliest shops to repair and modernise instruments as well as build them). But one key figure in establishing its dominance was Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume. He had the vision and reach; he had the sheer chutzpah needed to alter some of the best and rarest Cremonese violins irreversibly. He was, after all, the man who modernised the ‘Messiah’. Vuillaume, W.E. Hill & Sons and other influential shops combined the modern neck and fingerboard with a suite of other innovations to form the modern set-up, an approved recipe for rebuilding all earlier instruments. And so it was that a new generation of players – with refurbished violins in one hand and redesigned bows in the other – set forth into the Romantic era.

FIGURE 5 Original neckset for a 1793 Mantegazza viola, with the purfling going only partway under the fingerboard

NATIONAL MUSIC MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA. MANTEGAZZA, STRADIVARI: BILL WILLROTH SR.

FIGURE 6 Nail holes show through on the modernised neck of the 1693 ‘Harrison’ Stradivari

As with anything built outside of Utopia, the modern neckset comes with its own set of problems. Inserting the heel deeply into the top adds considerably to the difficulty of removing the top for repairs, as the neck root obstructs insertion of an opening knife.

Cutting through the purfling makes the top prone to cracking at either side of the mortise. The slender dimensions of neck and fingerboard make warping an issue. To prevent this, makers in recent decades have begun reinforcing neck and heel using carbon fibre and other materials. One way of doing this is where a carbon-fibre strip is set into the neck under the fingerboard, and a vertical-grained maple spline into the heel. (Sonowood, a new product made from compressed woods, is looking like a greener alternative to carbon fibre. Though it has less tensile strength, it is sufficient for the job, and it can be cut and glued by normal means.)

Even a fully stabilised neck remains tethered to an unstable body. Top and back archings shrink and expand with changing humidity; string heights rise and fall accordingly. Archings gradually deform under constant load, allowing neck projection to drift gradually downward. As a result, the bridge is cut down in increments until it is deemed too low, at which point the neck must be raised and a new bridge fitted. For players, the whole cycle is expensive and inconvenient. For makers (at least

those earning a living from building new instruments), it is an unwelcome distraction from more interesting projects.

These problems have been with us a long time. The modern neck had hardly settled in before makers began experimenting with new ways to solve neck-related problems. With the invention of the screw-cutting lathe in 1797, mass production of accurately sized screws became possible, enabling the design of countless new mechanisms. Johann Stauffer (1778–1853) was a renowned Viennese guitar maker and innovator. His inventions include the arpeggione (which inspired Schubert’s sonata), a piano with a circular keyboard, a wholly redesigned violin, and an adjustable neck for guitars and cellos. His neck mechanism was adopted for a time by one of his apprentices, C.F. Martin, who moved to the US and founded Martin Guitars. In the mid-19th century a bass viol from Stradivari’s workshop was converted into a cello by one ‘Jos. Wagner’, who installed an adjustable neck based on Stauffer’s design (figure 7, page 32).

The basic action is simple: A key inserted at the root of the neck loosens a screw that allows the neck to tilt forward.

Tightening the screw pulls the neck back. (For this to work, the button cannot be attached to the back; this holds for virtually all adjustable neck designs.) Stauffer’s neck mechanism is still being manufactured for use in historical guitar models.

Two contemporary makers of Stauffer-like ingenuity, James Ham and the late Patrick Charton, have built instruments with adjustable necks. With Ham’s double bass, the heel doesn’t tilt but instead slides up and down the top-block on internal rails. The player loosens a screw in the back of the heel with a key, then uses that same key to turn an adjustment screw below the button (figure 8, page 32). So beautifully resolved is the geometry that the bass remains in tune even after a significant change in string heights. Patrick Charton used a variety of tilting-neck designs. The mechanism used in his ‘Suit-bass’ (figure 9) is entirely exposed. Seeing a player dismantle and reassemble the entire instrument in a matter of minutes (bit.ly/2U6YAJU) is a testament to makerly ingenuity at the service of player convenience.

FIGURE 7 Bass viola da gamba from the Stradivari workshop, c.1735, converted into a cello with an adjustable neck by Jos. Wagner, 1831. Note that the neck is inset into the ribs but not the top

NATIONAL MUSIC MUSEUM, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH DAKOTA. STRADIVARI: BILL WILLROTH SR.

FIGURE 8 Adjustable neck on a James Ham double bass

COURTESY JAMES HAM.

FIGURE 9 The Patrick Charton ‘Suit-bass’ has an adjustable and quickly detachable neck

COURTESY PATRICK CHARTON ESTATE

Some 25 years ago I began experimenting with adjustable necks. The earliest was a simple sliding design used on a few violas. Adjusting it required unstringing the instrument and inserting a long key through the endpin hole into a screw in the top-block. Though far easier than resetting the neck, it didn’t seem worth the eccentricity, so I later converted them to traditional necksets. From there I moved to tilting designs and made half a dozen prototype variations before arriving at what seemed an elementally simple model (shown as a computer rendering in figures 10 and 11). The neck pivots about two set screws recessed into the neck. These control the centring. A third screw, which adjusts projection, goes through the heel into a threaded insert in the upper block. Simple as it is, the basic principle works extremely well and can be implemented in numerous ways.

The downside is that when the strings are loosened, the neck can flop around on the adjustment screw. This can be remedied by fixing a spring-steel pin into a brass insert in the neck heel, as in figure 10. The other end slides into a brass tube in the upper block. The flexibility of the pin allows a few degrees of tilt while keeping the neck securely in place even without string tension. When the strings are tuned up, the assembly becomes rock solid. Adjustable necks typically give the player control over neck projection only, but the addition of a small port in the bass side of the heel (figure 12) makes the centring of the fingerboard adjustable too.

An adjustable neck has advantages beyond the obvious. During the initial set-up, the maker can try bridges of different heights. Once the optimal height is discovered, it need never be changed. Also, a quickly detachable neck makes it significantly easier to remove the top and back for repairs.

With larger instruments it becomes feasible to detach the neck for transportation. More speculatively, a player could swap necks on a single instrument, going Baroque for one performance and modern for the next.

It is interesting to compare the development of the violin with that of the steel-string guitar, as the two share a similar narrative trajectory, with the guitar’s compressed into a single century. The steel-string emerged as a distinct instrument in the early 20th century. A pre-World War II ‘golden age’ was followed by ongoing attempts to recapture the sound and feel of the most sought-after instruments. Guitars played by famous musicians appreciated wildly. In 2020 a rare 1959 Martin D-18E sold at auction for $6 million. Okay, it belonged to Kurt Cobain, but that is saying no more than that ‘Il Cannone’ belonged to Paganini. Like violins, guitars have neck issues.

Long necks together with high string tensions make reinforcement mandatory. Metal truss rods are widely used, typically with an adjustment nut that lets the player alter the scoop of the neck. In 2007 Martin introduced a line of instruments with a ‘continually adjustable neck’. The design is strikingly similar to James Ham’s.

FIGURE 10 Digital rendering of a simple tilting neck design using three screws. The neck is reinforced with carbon fibre along its length, the heel with vertical-grain maple, and the back face of the top-block with a horizontal-grain maple strip

FIGURE 11 A spring-pin keeps the neck and body aligned and in place even without string tension. Neck projection is adjusted using the screw near the bottom of the heel

FIGURE 12 Adjustments to the centring of the fingerboard can be made via the port on the bass side of the heel

FIGURE 13 One implementation of an adjustable neck design using three screws and a spring-pin. For player comfort, the fingerboard has been widened along the upper reaches of the treble side. As with virtually all adjustable designs, the button is not attached to the back.

ALL PHOTOS LONNY MARINO

A PLAYER COULD SWAP NECKS ON A SINGLE INSTRUMENT, GOING BAROQUE FOR ONE PERFORMANCE AND MODERN FOR THE NEXT

The disadvantage of adjustable necks lies not with their utility but their novelty. An innovative neckset may be exciting for the inventor and useful to the player, but unless its workings are transparent and maintenance-free, it may be difficult to get anyone other than the original maker to maintain or re-sell the instrument.

That, at least, is the underlying fear in the violin world – though if this world were truly as conservative as is commonly

assumed, we would still be playing Baroque instruments. Ironically, the apparent immutability of the violin rests on its capacity to retain its identity despite extensive structural modifications. Changes are widely accepted only when they solve significant problems for players and/or makers. The modern neckset solved one set of problems but introduced another. A well-designed adjustable neck can eliminate neckrelated problems altogether.