Violin makers routinely finish their instruments with a thick coat of varnish, the better to protect and preserve the wood. Now Swiss scientists claim that this varnish also plays a role in the ...

Forty-five years ago, as a freshman in college, Cal Meineke was poking around a music department storage room and came across a rare Tyrolean violin made in the 17th century by the German Matthias ...

The world’s best violins come with strings made from catgut—which isn’t typically from cats, but does definitely come from the inside of an animal. If you want a more vegetarian alternative, though, ...

One little trick and BAM, you’ve got yourself a brand-new string instrument. Violinist Esther Abrami has come up with a brilliant trick to make a violin sound like a cello: and literally all you have ...

SPIDERS can now give you goosebumps in a good way. This violin owes its thrilling sound to its strings – the first to be spun from spider silk. Shigeyoshi Osaki at Nara Medical University in Japan ...

A good violin depends on the expertise of the violin maker, but also on the quality of the wood that is used. Professor Francis W. M. R. Schwarze of th Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science ...

Spiders might soon give you goosebumps in a good way. Strands of spider silk have been used to make violin strings that have a unique and thrilling sound, thanks perhaps to the way the strands deform ...