About the Fingerboard of a Violin & How It's Made

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m David Kaynor for expertvillage.com. I’m going to talk about the violin fingerboard. The fingerboard in violin is usually made of the same wood as it’s used in the pegs and the chin rest and the tail piece, it’s considered good form to have them be a matched set. In this case they’re all ebony a dark hardwood from tropical regions quiet hard, it’s quiet easy to work and it makes a really excellent surface for pressing strings against, that was a relatively subjective statement, but I think that is the requirements for fingerboards, pegs and tail pieces that the material look good, feel good, the reasonably workable and have a relatively long useful life. Fingerboards become worn as a result of abrasion from fingers pressing down strings against the wood, and on this fingerboard if the light is right it might be possible to actually see the indications of some wore on the board. A violin technician knows how to level the finger board such that in any one region there are no irregularities which would potentially interfere with a vibrating of a string or add discomfort to holding a string down. But at the same time the entire board has a very slight concavity which is a little difficult to describe, but if I was to say that a completely straight fingerboard from end to end wouldn’t produce ideal tones along its entire length. So a very subtle concavity is created by the technician along with the arch which goes from one side of the fingerboard to the other, and roughly approximates the arch of the average bridge. If you were to hold the bridge up next to the end of the fingerboard, you can actually see that the arches are pretty similar."