On violin plate and corpus tuning
Oliver E. Rodgers · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 1991
The tuning of violin free plates in the manner advocated by Carleen Hutchins is now established practice. One can be sure of producing an instrument with good sound. However, the way to an instrument that has excellent sound is still elusive and seems to depend on details of construction that continue to elude investigators. This paper describes some of the existing clues that identify important details of violin design and construction that may lead to further progress toward achieving superior performance, including adjustment of the assembled corpus and complete instrument, guided by acoustical measures. Some suggestions are made of directions for further research on violins and the larger stringed instruments. Only measurement of the sound output of test instruments, tempered by what the human ear hears, will provide the information necessary to make additional progress.