What I’m Lusting After: Luis and Clark Violin
This is what I’m lusting after right now. A Luis and Clark Carbon Fibre Violin.
Grrrrrr… 
At $5539 (or £3427) I’m saving up my pennies, and not holding hope for Santa to do the honours.
This sexy beast is made of a one-piece carbon fibre body and has gears in the pegbox. Save for the strings, it’s completely unaffected by heat, cold, sun, rain, snow, hail, no cracking, warping, peeling, woodworm or going out of tune at really inopportune moments.
You gotta love technology.
My current violin, of the plain old wooden variety, is lovely, and I do rather like it… but I struggle with the lack of ethics involved in its manufacture. The wood is over a hundred years old so I can pretty much cope with the lack of sustainable sourcing… but the glue is a hideous concoction of boiled down animal leftover bits. Ugh. Pretty grim.
The bow’s not much better. Most horsehair for bows is a slaughterhouse byproduct. The nylon fake stuff is pretty crud and sounds ropey. I do have an ‘Incredibow’ that’s completely synthetic though and it’s actually not all that bad considering the price, and I tend to chop and change between playing it and my normal wood bow.
You can also get ‘live’ horsehair. I’ve not tried it, but have been putting off rehairing my other bow for a few years now so saving up for that too…
The Incredibow is also much lighter and it’s soooo much easier on the right hand when I’ve got a touch of RSI from composing on the Mac for too long.
So if anyone’s feeling generous…
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I just bought one, along with a Codabow Diamond GX.. Amazing for a guy who has never touched, or heard either one to just blow almost $7K..
That said.. First half hour with this combination was not that great; but next half hours was brilliant! The bow was light, and lively, drew smooth and true. The violin itself was ridiculously light, and the neck shape was less traditional and too some getting use to; so you often over jump your positions until you get use to it. But living in Reno, and having temps below freezing, the strings still go out of tune from temp change, but at least I don’t have to worry about my violin cracking! I played in an outdoor concert once, left my bow in the sun, and it snapped.. I was so traumatized that now I only play Carbon Fiber bows.
Save your pennies; it’s well worth it! I have gone to violin shops and played their entire inventory and I’d say the Luis and Clark is as good as the $22K violins that I tried in LA. Cleans with windex!!
Heather – If you want to reduce/avoid RSI, try using a Wacom tablet and a big non-Apple mouse – which are basically designed induce RSI – Mac mice that is. The smaller the mouse, the worse the problem usually
I now use Mouse in left hand and tablet in right. I also have a table that can function as a trackpad. No more RSI.
Be careful as I know people with permanent debiltating injuries from RSI.
Never realised violins weren’t vegetarian!