E string whistling

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Permalink Reply by Erin Shrader on January 11, 2010 at 10:39am

You won't find a perlon E string. Perlon is too stretchy to use for E strings. But you could try the Kaplan non-whistling E from D'Addario which is specifically designed to address that whistling problem. Their string designer, Fan Tao, is a good vioilnist. He started his research with his own violin and bow. They get good reviews from players.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Keating on January 11, 2010 at 12:16pm

Thank you. I'll find one and give it a try.

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Permalink Reply by Ulf Kloo on January 17, 2010 at 10:01am

The Kaplan Solutions E that Erin suggested is a wound steel E-string. You can't force it to whistle even if you would like to do it. Other brands of wound steel E-strings are Pirastro Eudoxa and Thomastik Dominant. They'll never tend to whistle either. Thomastic is launching a wound E for their Vision Titanium set. It has a mighty sound if you need to boost your E-string.( I don't know if it's on the market yet) These wound E-strings can actually work fine as Baroque E if you detune a semitone.
Moving the soundpost and adjustments of the tailpiece might influence the tendency to whistle, but some violins are difficult to cure.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Keating on January 17, 2010 at 8:55pm

Thank you. I ordered a Kaplan E from a local store and will hopefully have it by next week. Nobody seems to stock it where I'm at.

Ulf Kloo said:

The Kaplan Solutions E that Erin suggested is a wound steel E-string. You can't force it to whistle even if you would like to do it. Other brands of wound steel E-strings are Pirastro Eudoxa and Thomastik Dominant. They'll never tend to whistle either. Thomastic is launching a wound E for their Vision Titanium set. It has a mighty sound if you need to boost your E-string.( I don't know if it's on the market yet) These wound E-strings can actually work fine as Baroque E if you detune a semitone.
Moving the soundpost and adjustments of the tailpiece might influence the tendency to whistle, but some violins are difficult to cure.

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Permalink Reply by Kevin Keating on January 23, 2010 at 11:58am

I put a Kaplan wound E on my fiddle today. Much better! It's almost like there is more resistance to the bow, more like the A, D & G. Much happier. Thank you.

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Permalink Reply by Dan Lawrence on January 28, 2010 at 8:03am

The strings to look for are the Dominant #130 e and the Pirastro Eudoxa #3140. Both are aluminum wrapped steel core strings. The whistle typically occurs when slurring from the d on the a string to the open e, and is accentuated as the bow strays further from the bridge. With a little practice you can get almost any violin to do it, but it mostly goes unnoticed.
Dan
http://www.danlawrenceviolins.com

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Permalink Reply by Emmanuel G.M. on March 12, 2010 at 12:40pm

Hope this helps!

Kaplans Solutions (non-whistling) E String:

The non-whistling E string eliminates the whistling sound sometimes heard when the open E string is played while crossing from a lower string.

http://www.gostrings.com/kapsolest.html

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