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Spencer                 Hamann

Francois Chanot (1788-1825) was an interesting figure in the violin's history.  His father Joseph Chanot was a respected luthier in Mirecourt, France, but Francois had no early inclination of wanting to continue the family trade (which would have been the common practice of the day).  Instead, he was accepted into a prestegious engineering school and studied marine engineering, later joining the French Navy.  However, Chanot was discharged from the Navy in 1816 when it was discovered that he was a sympathizer of Napoleon, and looking for gainful employment, picked up the mantle of his family's luthier practices. 

Chanot approached the violin from an engineering standpoint, and had a number of ideas on how the instrument could be improved.  These ideas included constructing instruments without corners (more of a guitar shape), longer and more simply shaped sound holes, scrolls that wound backwards towards the ground (to better facilitate changing the strings) and tailpieces that attached directly to the instrument's top and where the strings were held in place by pins (similar to a guitar's bridge).

Although there are accounts that they were well recieved in his day and made for a good sounding instrument, Chanot's innovations failed to stick in modern violin design.  The violin world is fairly concervative and tradition driven, and drastic changes are often met with great resistance.  However, some musicians and musical historians (myself included) are fascinated by innovations and concepts from the past that never gained traction, and one of Chanot's concepts has always particularly fascinated me: the guitar-style pin tailpiece.

To really test this concept properly as Chanot designed it would probably require building an instrument from scratch, and the ability to measure some of his original works.  However, as a proof of concept, I decided to retrofit an old instrument with a top mounted ebony tailpiece, where the strings are secured in by bone pins.

The instrument I used was nothing overly special: a mid range W.H.Lewis & Sons violin made in the 1970's that had some major cosmetic damage, and a substantial top crack.  This instrument would not have been otherwise worth restoring (which was actually how I came by it in the first place) but the slightly thicker top and otherwise solid construction made for adequate canvas. 

Below is a gallery of the instrument conversion process, and the finished product all put together.  Perhaps I will write more about the results in the blog at a later date.    

Chanot Inspired
Pin Tailpiece Violin

Click picture for more detail