Who are we?

    My name's Jonathan Rowe, and I've been playing violin as an amateur for some 53 years now, and rebuilding basket-case violins and violas for more than 10 years. Over the last 5 or 6 years the odd violin or two for rebuilding has become the 40 or more - when I discovered eBay. Not one single violin among them was a Stradivarius: the labels in them were telling fibs!

    I got a general Engineering Degree from Cambridge in the early 1970's and then trained as a teacher and taught secondary Science, Maths and Physics for several years. Ever since then I've been working in the electronics industry, mostly in telecoms and in sales.  I'm at home with most technology.

I retired at the beginning of 2009.

Here's a picture of me and my family. I am very proud of them!                                                      Here I am as a Long John Silver in this year's Pantomime, trying to look fierce.

  I get hair for one week of the year: for the last 10 years it has been yellow hair, as I played the Dame.         This year (2012) I tried to frighten small children as the Pantomime villain - but the best I could do is get a laugh, a blank stare, or a boo.

                Here's a picture of my daughter Suzy when she got her BSc at Bangor in July ‘08.  That's me and my wife Katie being very proud of her.

So now we've 3 children with 3 degrees, all degrees that are better than mine. I'm not really jealous.

      Last year I bought a very good, and very expensive Richard Weichold violin bow off Dave Swarbrick (Swarb) as a retirement present to myself. Here's a picture of the Swarb himself with said bow. I'm hoping that some of his ability will pass to me by osmosis from the bow: it is working a little, as I can now play nearly half of part of the Bach Partita No. 3 .......  so there's only another 10,000 hours of practice to go.

 I couldn't resist putting a picture of me with Swarb with the Weichold bow: ability by inference rather than evidence.

So what is the basis for claiming that setting up tap-tones in front and back plates works?

Of the 40+ low-cost violins (and violas) I have and had, so far I've modified about 28. These are of all sorts, and links to some of those in detail with pictures and Stiffness Factors can be found on the “Violin & viola examples” page.

  The changes I have made to these fiddles verify that Dr. Harris's method of compensating for Mode 2 and for plate weights really works. My minor additions also improve the results when the plates (the wood) is particularly non-standard, i.e. particularly dense or heavy. The method can be applied to any violin or viola (including fractional sizes)  to produce a fine sounding, playable instrument with a fairly predictable tone.

  I have documented some of them (see Example Violins) to show how the tone and playability was improved. It includes sound files too to give you some idea of the tone. I show what is good, and what is not so good about them. There is still a lot of work still to do.

 About this site

            I first created this site, www.platetuning.org in November 2007.  I had no idea how many people would visit it.

    In November 2010 it's interesting to reflect on who visits the site, and where visitors come from.  As far as ‘popularity' goes, 34%, not surprisingly, are from the US of A. Then comes 12% from the UK, then 6% from Canada, and 3% now from Germany: click on the picture left.

 The statistics to mid Feb. 2012 are shown below. The site gets an average of 115 visits a day, and most people stay 2 to 5  minutes, and about 25% of visitors look at 2 or more pages. Some stay for an hour!

         I guess that's pretty surprising in retrospect for such a specialist subject.

Many want the violin plans and articles, and also one ‘popular' page is the “Books links and Articles” page: hardly surprising I suppose.

Google translation does make this (and any other site) readable in pretty much any language. The greek translation is popular, then the Italian (obviously from Cremona), and then French.

      What has surprised me is how few people contact me or visit the blog.  I'd hoped that I'd learn more of other people's experiences as they tell their stories of violins they've known, made or modified, but I have had a few great contacts over the last 10 months.

So mail me! and tell me what you're doing breaking open a violin!

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  I have some spare space here ..... so here is something totally inappropriate....

        I got my son a iPhone for his birthday the other week, and recently got my Daughter a iPod for hers. I was dead chuffed when the family clubbed together and bought me an iPad for father's day.

             So I got my wife an iRon for her Birthday, and that is how the fight started...... she doesn't realise! The iRon can be integrated into the iWash, iCook and iClean.

WHY MEN ARE NEVER DEPRESSED:  Men are just ... happier people

Your last name stays put.
The garage is all yours.
Wedding plans take care of themselves.
Chocolate is just another snack.
You can never be pregnant.
Car mechanics tell you the truth.
The world is your urinal.
You don't have to stop and think of which way to turn a nut on a bolt.
Same work, more pay.
Wrinkles add character.
People never stare at your chest when you're talking to them.
New shoes don't cut, blister, or mangle your feet.
One mood, all the time.
Phone conversations are over in 30 seconds flat.
You know stuff about tanks and engines.  A five-day holiday requires only one suitcase.
You can open all your own jars.
You get extra credit for the slightest act of thoughtfulness.
Your underwear is £9.50 for a three-pack. Three pairs of shoes are more than enough. You never have strap problems in public.
You are unable to see wrinkles in your clothes.
Everything on your face stays its original colour.
The same hairstyle lasts for years, maybe decades.
You only have to shave your face and neck.
You can play with toys all your life.
One wallet and one pair of shoes -- one colour for all seasons.
You can wear shorts no matter how your legs look.
You can 'do' your nails with a pocket knife.
You have freedom of choice concerning growing a moustache. You can do Christmas shopping for 24 relatives on 24th December in 24 minutes ......
Yes, no wonder men are happier.