5 Stringers

Q: A couple of years ago I acquired your name from someone at a bluegrass festival. They said you were making 5 stringers. Since then a friend of mine has purchased one. The question is : Where have you been able to get e strings long enough for a 15 plus viola?
Jack C. Brainerd
Veritable Violins
Boulder, Co.

A: Four of the five strings are no problem, they are viola strings. The scale length of a violin is 13". The body length of a violin is 14". The scale length of a viola ranges from 14" to 15". The body length of a viola ranges from 15" to 17". On a 15" or 15.5" body length viola, with a fine tuner, standard violin E strings usually fit. On bigger violas or ones with shorter tailpieces, use a .010 guitar string. There are violin E strings with aluminum winding or gold plating, but most E strings, in all price ranges, are just a piece of music wire with silk winding at both ends. Guitar E strings don't have silk winding, but they are made out of the exact same music wire, they are way longer than you will ever need, they are available in loop or ball end, and they are 1/4 the price of a violin string. Music wire is a die drawn alloy specifically formulated for that purpose. It has the optimum elements of strength and flexibility. It is used for stringing everything from violins to pianos. It all comes, for all American string manufacturers, from one factory in New Jersey. It is possible to make wire so strong (called "rocket wire" from it's use winding the nose cones of rockets) that you could make instrument strings that would never break, but they wouldn't bend well and they wouldn't vibrate sweetly.

Beware the 30" rule. This states that a 30" long string can not be tuned higher than a guitar high E. If you make the string thicker it will be stronger, but it will take more tension to pull it up to E, and it will break. If you use a thinner string, it takes less tension to pull it up to E, but it is not as strong, and it will break. The scale length of a guitar is about 25.5" so there is no problem. The high G string on a 12 string guitar (three half steps above E) comes very close to the limit, and they break all the time. The 30" rule for a guitar E translates to a 15" rule for a violin E, which is one octave higher. The violin string has exactly the same tension and half the length. It is like playing a guitar E string fretted at the 12th fret. The first viola that I converted to five strings had a 17" body and a 15" scale. The E strings broke so regularly that I gave up and made the fifth string a low F instead of a high E. Guitar Es work fine on 16" body violas. I fear going much larger than that.

Steve Mason