Huguette Clark, a few hundred million dollars, a Cezanne painting and several Stradivaris. Eccentric?

By Andy Fein, violin maker at Fein Violins

Huguette Clark passed away in 2011 at the age of 104. She spent the last twenty years of her life living in a hospital room at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City. Not that she needed the hospital room. Or the hospital. Or much attention from doctors and nurses. But she had the money to pay for the twenty year visit and that's where she felt most comfortable. Eccentric? Maybe. Wasteful? Maybe. (She could have spent those years quite comfortably in her 42 room Fifth Ave. apartment, or her estates in California or Connecticut).

The Paganini Quartet of Stradivarius instruments

But it was her money, so who cares? Her distant family. They received a big, fat portion of Bubkis in her will.

Why would I care about this heiress or the legal fight over her estate? Violins, of course. Stradivaris. Several of them. And it's a great story.

The String Instrument FAQ

Written by Andy Fein, luthier at Fein Violins
 and Ben Schuneman

We get tons of questions every day, from friends and customers, about violins. Some are humorous to those of us who are around these instruments every day and know the terminology, but all are asked in complete and earnest sincerity. This will be a running blog that will get refreshed every so often. Enjoy!

"I have a Stradivarius that I found in my attic! It must be one of those lost treasures you hear about all the time! Is it worth millions?"

Equal and Just Temperament -- They Have Nothing to Do with How Well You Behave

Written by Matt Lammers of Fein Violins

We've all been there: you've practiced your quartet part well. You know the notes and can play them. You head into rehearsal confident that the opening chords will slot beautifully into place, but are greeted instead by beat frequencies, colleagues frowning at each other, and self-depricating, frustrated remarks like, "well, I guess this'll never be in tune". So you go home and sit in front of a tuner...and it gives you a nice little beep and green light, as if to say, "congrats! You're perfect!" Alas, you know you aren't. Rather than putting your temper to the test, let's put temperament to the test.

Simply put, temperament is the spacing between the pitches in a scale; it defines the sizes of intervals. Take the most notorious temperament issue for example: the third in a major or minor chord. Let's say the third of either chord is A (this means our major and minor keys are F-Major/FM and f#-minor/f#m). If you were to play an A in an FM chord at the pitch your tuner says is correct, you would find that your A sounds sharp (see video). If you were to play that same exact tuner-tuned A in am f#m chord, it would sound flat. In either case your A, which is supposedly in tune, sounds out of tune in reality. Don't blame your colleagues, blame physics. If you haven't encountered this issue before, watch our video that demonstrates the problem:

The Piedmont Region and its Violin Makers

By Andy Fein, luthier at Fein Violins
Matt Lammers and Amy Tobin

Here in America, we tend to think that we have the monopoly on the idea of 'the great melting pot.' When the rest of the world began their exodus to 'the new world,' New York became an amalgamation of peoples and cultures from everywhere else. We can not, however, lay claim to this phenomenon. In fact, the Piedmont region of Italy was a melting pot of nationalities and cultures long before this happened on our own soil.

The Piedmont region of Italy includes

Why a Frog? Why Are There Frogs on Bows?

Written by Matt Lammers of Fein Violins

It's one of those curiosities that disappeared with age and experience, one of those elephants in the room you asked about as a beginner, and your teacher shrugged it off with a puzzled expression telling you it wasn't worth losing sleep over. It became a part of your vocabulary and was never given a second thought, but in the back of your head you've always wondered: "Why on earth do we call this the frog?" Here at Fein Violins we embrace and resurrect our own childish curiosity and hope to relax the furled brows of confused, [used-to-be] young musicians everywhere.

The frog of a bow is a simple, yet intricate thing