stroh-player
The phono-fiddle is much louder than a conventional violin, but its timbre is thinner, with eerie phonographic overtones. Vibrations from the strings are conducted to the center of an aluminum disc that acts as a diaphragm (like a very old-fashioned amp), propelling the sound back out through the large horn and smaller ear trumpet.
Sometimes, the Stroh sounds like a human voice playing through a hand-cranked Victrola. Other times it sounds like a tenor saxophone gargling a cat...
John Matthias Augustus Stroh invented it in 1899 because regular violins were too quiet to register on the wax cylinder recorders of that era. Before the advent of electric amplification, recording devices relied on sound vibrations being funneled through a large metal cone that moved a sharp cutting device, which in turn gouged grooves into a rotating tube of hardened wax. When played back with a stylus, these grooves in the wax were interpreted into sound.
Anything one records in this fashion --even modern techno-- will sound as if it has had to sluice its way through a sea of decades. When music finally reaches the listener, awash with hisses, pops and clicks, it has become the ghost of a song. Never fails to raise all the tiny little hairs on the backs of my arms.
As early as 1910, Thomas Edison's company was the only major company still using wax cylinders. Disk record technology had advanced in leaps and bounds and was far less expensive. Thus, the wax cylinder recorder and the Stroh fell to the wayside, lost on that shiny, steampunk junkpile reserved for all esoteric sciences.
Lark In The Morning is an incredible music store in San Francisco that specializes in oddball antiquities and so-called "extinct" instruments. They also stock all kinds of wonderfully hippie dippy stuff like the cumbus and the "dulcigurdy". My Stroh beau was hanging from a grimy hook in the corner of the shop where he'd obviously been gathering dust for a while. I promptly tucked him under my chin and christened him "Augustus."
stroh-player
The phono-fiddle is much louder than a conventional violin, but its timbre is thinner, with eerie phonographic overtones. Vibrations from the strings are conducted to the center of an aluminum disc that acts as a diaphragm (like a very old-fashioned amp), propelling the sound back out through the large horn and smaller ear trumpet.
Sometimes, the Stroh sounds like a human voice playing through a hand-cranked Victrola. Other times it sounds like a tenor saxophone gargling a cat...
John Matthias Augustus Stroh invented it in 1899 because regular violins were too quiet to register on the wax cylinder recorders of that era. Before the advent of electric amplification, recording devices relied on sound vibrations being funneled through a large metal cone that moved a sharp cutting device, which in turn gouged grooves into a rotating tube of hardened wax. When played back with a stylus, these grooves in the wax were interpreted into sound.
Anything one records in this fashion --even modern techno-- will sound as if it has had to sluice its way through a sea of decades. When music finally reaches the listener, awash with hisses, pops and clicks, it has become the ghost of a song. Never fails to raise all the tiny little hairs on the backs of my arms.
As early as 1910, Thomas Edison's company was the only major company still using wax cylinders. Disk record technology had advanced in leaps and bounds and was far less expensive. Thus, the wax cylinder recorder and the Stroh fell to the wayside, lost on that shiny, steampunk junkpile reserved for all esoteric sciences.
Lark In The Morning is an incredible music store in San Francisco that specializes in oddball antiquities and so-called "extinct" instruments. They also stock all kinds of wonderfully hippie dippy stuff like the cumbus and the "dulcigurdy". My Stroh beau was hanging from a grimy hook in the corner of the shop where he'd obviously been gathering dust for a while. I promptly tucked him under my chin and christened him "Augustus."