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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

Lynda,

> Have you ever used swamp ash?  

Alas, it's rare here in the higher ground of the South.  If I could find some 
growing, I could get it milled and dry it myself, but as it is, the guitar 
makers scarf up every splinter of it on the market and so the price is high.  
It 
wouldn't do for the neck or pillar of the harp (not hard enough to hold the 
pins), but it would make ideal soundbox material.  I've never known anyone 
using it on lutes, but it is close grained and very, very light so it seems 
the 
perfect wood for it.

> 
> My great uncle made stringed instruments and made a cello out of a walnut 
> burl.  It is now in a museum. 

That would be something!  There's an baseless bias that cellos can only be 
made out of European maple and have Swiss pine tops.  Yet walnut is perhaps 
the 
perfect wood for the purpose.



 >I do have the first 
> violin he ever made.


Do you play it?  I am setting up the jigs to make a few rebecs for the SCA 
and Ren Faire types, but that's not nearly so demanding as making a violin.


> 
> The difference in handmade instruments is, hmmmm, best way to describe it 
> 

And with GAT and globalism  the difference is getting more and more.  Gibson, 
Martin, even Lyon and Healy and the like are all setting up shop in third 
world countries and the result is really lousy instruments.  This would be a 
hard 
thing to do for a living if I needed much money, which I don't.  Often 
someone will come into the shop with an instrument disassembled and sometimes 
unglued and say "Did you have that playing yesterday?"

And I say, "Yes, but I didn't like it."

And good musicians are all nutcases (sorry, Lee).  I've seen a piano tuned 
electronically and a pianist grimace and retune it to the point that only God 
could hear the difference.  Like that, harp, lute, mandolin etc players will 
be 
annoyed if one glue was used over another, or the nut is made of plastic 
instead of bone, or some such seemingly insignificat detail.  

I'd like to get a look at that cello, though.

James