Fiddle and Alternative Strings Forum

I bought a new (very old) fiddle recently. It had some serious cracks which I successfully repaired, and at present I have it fitted with a set of Tomastic "Vision" synthetic strings.

There are some interesting features that my local experts and I are trying to sort out. It's a very nice fiddle, excellent workmanship inside and out, excellent original varnish, very strong voice even before I repaired the cracks and with the ancient gut strings that came on it. The "G" was wound with what looks like a copper alloy, the other three strings (including the "E") were plain gut. The rosewood tailpiece does not show any evidence of ever having had any fine tuners installed, including the "E", and all other evidence suggested that it never had anything except plain gut strings installed.

It has a one-piece lower rib with the saddle extended down into the rib about 3/16", beautifully graduated top and back, extremely good quality wood with nice flaming, the wood in the ribs and neck matches the wood in the back, nicely fitted separate bass bar, etc., in other words all the hallmarks of a well made fiddle. This is definitely NOT a cheap "trade fiddle".

It's obviously German (according to my local experts), one says from about 1850 to 1880. Anothwer says it looks more like from around 1900. I found a very faint date marking on the button that looks like a capital "T" with the number "1862" under it.

The interesting part is the stamp. It has "Hopf" branded in the back just below the button in the usual spot, and on the inside under the bass side ff-hole.

Of course there are literally thousands of fiddles stamped "HOPF", some good, a few outstanding, probably the majority of them cheap knock-off trade fiddles trying to take advantage of the name. This is not a cheap trade fiddle, I'm guessing it's probably a "shop" or "conservatory" quality instrument.

However, all of the "HOPF" violins I've seen have the name stamped in straight, unslanted block capital letters. This one has slanted letters, the "H" capitalized and the other three letters in lower case.

One of the most famous Hopfs was a David Hopf from the late 1700's. He and everyone else (including the knock-offs) used the all-capitols unslanted letters in their stamp.

I'm told there was a second, less famous David Hopf from the 1850-1880 time period who (according to one of my local expert's references) altered his stamp to distinguish his work from the earlier David Hopf, so this could conceivably be one of his.

One of my other local experts (the one who thinks it looks more like 1900 vintage) commented that it resembles a Pfretchner (not that it is, just that it resembles one). He also says that most of the Hopfs he's seen are dreadful (presumably most of those are trade fiddles, with carved-in bass bars, poor graduiations, etc.), and that this one is much better than any of the Hopfs he's seen.

Can any of you experts out there shed some light on all of this? Note, I'm not harboring any delusions of an "Antiques Roadshow" moment here (even if it was from a famous maker, the cracks take it out of that "prime investment" category anyway). I bought it for what I could learn in the process of fixing it, and the fun of playing it afterwards. I have no intention of selling it after I fix it up, regardless of its value or lineage, or lack thereof. However, it does give hints that it could have an interesting background, and I'd just like to satisfy my curiosity about that.

Marci Sprouse (wife of fiddler Blaine Sprouse) has a suspected Hopf of her own, and took a personal interest in helping track down the background of mine. She's set up a website for it at:
http://www.blainesprouse.com/bb/viewtopic.php?t=2&sid=d85fb733c3a16f91d5e95e4c64459546

It also included a fairly nice old pernambuco bow, with a nickel-silver plate on the tip, ebony frog with a highly colored abalone slide, nickel silver ferrule and nickel silver/ebony button, and sterling silver eyes on the frog. The stick is about 1/2" shorter than usual. There was no stamp, thumb grip or wrapping on the stick. I've since restored it with a snakeskin thumb grip and  nickel silver plus blue french silk wrappings. Balance point with the hair slack is 7 3/4" from the end of the frog and 9 11/16" from the end of the stick. It plays very well, and is now one of my favorites.

BTW, once I got the cracks repaired, a new sound post and bridge fitted and voiced, etc., the fiddle turned out to be even better than I expected. The sound is excellent, and so is the response. Overall it rivals my Eastman 305, and is better in a number of specifics. The repairs seem to be holding well. Overall I'm please with the Tomastik "Vision" strings, although I plan to try some others. The titanium E is doing OK, but I think an aluminum wound E might be good on this fiddle. In any case, regardless of when and by whom it was made, I have a very nice instrument for a relatively minimal monetary investment plus some of my time. A nice instrument has been successfully brought back to its intended purpose of making music, instead of being condemned to be a "wall hanger".

Still, it would be nice to know a little more about where it came from.

Thanks for whatever help you folks can provide!

Keeso,

Thanks for the feedback!

I'm also on the Fiddle-L list, and Tom and I have had some discussions about this one.

This particular instrument is fully lined and blocked, with the linings mortised into the blocks. The bass bar is a separately carved, fitted and tuned piece. It's contoured similarly to other bass bars on good fiddles I've seen, although it's a little shorter in depth than the others I've seen, though still far deeper than a carved-in bass bar would be. This leads me to believe it was designed with gut strings in mind. The surface finish inside on the top, back and ribs is excellent, smooth and essentially free of any tool marks. Measuring at the inboard edges of the ff-holes, the top appears to be about 2.8 to 3 mm thick as best as I can tell without taking it apart.

It has excellent projection and volume (as good as my Eastman 305, which is quite loud), in fact it was quite strong in those regards even before I fixed the cracks. Tone quality (now that it's repaired) is also excellent. The focus on all notes including the G string is excellent, as is the resonance.

It has very nice, fine flaming on the back, ribs and neck that suggest they all came from the same log. The grain density is some of the finest I've seen. It takes a magnifying glass to discern the individual grain lines in the finer areas. I got out my digital calipers and measured them. The perfectly quarter-cut spruce top is very dense in the center, with gradually widening grain towards the sides, about 60-70 lines per inch at the center seam, decreasing to about 25 lines per inch at the outer edges.

The maple in the back and ribs measures about 60 to 70 lines per inch over the entire surface.

Historical trivia: assuming the 1850-1880 construction date, plus allowing for reasonable seasoning time, plus allowing for growth time, the oldest wood in the back must have started growing somewhere around the times of the voyage ofColumbus or the landing of the Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock.

The fingerboard and tailpiece are rosewood. There is some darkening on the bridge end of the fingerboard, the rest is natural color. The darkening could be some sort of varnish residue, although it looks more like maybe rosin residue that turned black with age. The wear on the fingerboard suggests active playing on all strings all the way up to within about an inch or less from the bridge end, suggesting probably classical or maybe Gypsy style music.

The branded word "Hopf" is definitely that, with a German style font. The website I mentioned has photos showing it. It would be very difficult to brand it on the inside through the ff-holes, and it appears that the top has never been removed, which suggests the Hopf branding is original, not added later.

The bridge it had on it was quite high and with a very flat arch. The old-style skinny sound post was fitted too tightly, and about 1/2" inboard of where it should have been. This is probably what both helped cause the sound post crack in the back, but also saved it. The crack is slightly diagonal (slightly across the grain, not parallel to it), and does not go all the way through to the inside. I get the impression that the fiddle was made by someone extremely skilled in the art, but some time later it was worked on by someone who knows even less about fiddles than I do. I suspect it was then dropped upside down, perhaps while in the case, landed on the bridge, which then transferred the impact energy through the sound post and caused the crack.

With the sound post in that incorrect position, it results in the classic bending stresses that make sound post cracks so difficult to repair successfully. However, once I set a new sound post in the correct location, laterally in line with the outboard part of the treble bridge foot instead of almost over the center of the fiddle, the crack in the back was not a sound post crack anymore! The stresses it sees now are mostly shear, not bending, and do not have the same tendency to try to reopen the crack.

The bass bar crack apparently began as a bass-side saddle crack, and then followed the outboard face of the bass bar forward. I had to steam the top loose from the crack around to the lower bass-side corner block to get the crack to close properly, but I did not have to take the top completely off. I was then able to wedge the top open and install cleats across the crack by reaching in from the side through the opening with my 8" crocodile-jawed ear polypus (yes, that really is the name of the instrument, it's a device that doctors use to remove foreign objects from childrens' ears, hence the name, and it's one of the most useful and versatile tools in my entire toolbox!). The repair ended up very clean and tight, and seems to be holding quite well.

One other curious marking: on the back of the upper bout, about 1 1/2" down and to the right (towards the bass side) of the "Hopf" brand, someone has written in cursive:

G.DO
-------
$12.00

It's impressed into the wood, but with no ink residue, as if maybe someone had written on a piece of paper and the pencil or pen impression had impressed through the paper into the wood. This raises the obvious question of exactly when this was done. If it was a price marking for this instrument and dates back to when this fiddle was made, then that $12.00 suggests a very nice fiddle indeed, in the context of your comments about original pricing of fiddles. However, if it dates to some later time, then it's hard to say what significance it has, if any.

One of my local experts dates it to the 1850 to 1880 time period, based in part on the use of rosewood for the fingerboard. There is also the date stamp that appears to read "1862".

OTOH, the 328 mm vibrating string length ("VSL"), the fact that the scroll is not grafted and that it appears to have the original neck, all suggests something more like 1900 to one of my other local experts. He does not believe it is actually a Hopf because the quality level is too good, based on the other Hopfs he's seen. However, the fact that it appears to have been designed for gut strings once again suggests an older instrument. According to my research, modern VSL's did appear back as far as the middle 1800's, but really became standard later in that century.

The one thing that does appear to have a consensus is that it's German, but after that I'm definitely reproving that old adage, "Ask a dozen experts the same question and you'll get a dozen answers."

Have you spoken to Ed Baxter of the Violin Makers Database about this (link on the left), he'd be my first point of call.

Mark.

I bought a Hopf on eBay thinking that it would be a copy, but it turned out to be far more interesting.  When it arrived I saw HOPF on the back and inside.  While I was checking the inside with my pen light I saw some handwriting way up where it was very difficult to read.
"This violin was found in South Peru, Ind. after the flood of 1913.The front, new sides and neck were made by Walter Overman in Kokomo, Ind in 1930"

I looked up the name and found him on the census working as an electrician. He was born in Indiana 1871-3 and lived in the area all his life.
I thought you would enjoy the story. So I have a HOPF back, real or copy and I like the sound.