A bow can improve your sound quality, make developing your bowing technique easier and is an important tool of expression.
Your personal preference is very important. Some like a very jumpy and lively bow, because it's more agile. Others like a 'calmer' bow that easily plays long even notes and doesn't play you. Read my article about what to play when you're selecting a bow for yourself. You might also like my other article with 19 (general!) checks to buy a violin bow.
When reading the following keep in mind that wood as well as carbon fiber bows are available in a variety of characters, feelings, makers, types and price classes. I'll dive deeper into that below.
Mainly pernambuco wood was very popular, because it's light, stiff and flexible.
Pernambuco is not allowed to be chopped down anymore! Wood bows become lower and lower in quality and higher in price.
Besides the prices going up and up, there are some downsides to pernambuco and wood in general:
The other wood used for bows is called 'brazil' which doesn't mean much and can be any kind of wood used in cheaper bows. The price is lower, but the downsides of wood are even more applicable to this lower quality wood.
The wood bows that are still widely used today stem from a time when pure gut strings with NO windings were played. The first steel strings were made at the end of the 19th Century, when metal windings became available which allowed to play much more powerful. They became necessary because concerts were no longer played in the small halls of the nobility but in the new large public halls that were being built in the western world at the time. Steel strings became possible only with the technological advances at the end of the 19th Century high tensile steel wires became available.
These new strings were much heavier than gut strings and allowed a much stronger technique. While pure gut violin strings can stand a force of only 2 Newton (200 grams), metal wound strings can take about 3 Newton. But that was not what the Tourte bows were designed for.
All through the 19th and 20th centuries great efforts were made to develop a stronger bow. Vuillaume developed a metal tube bow of wich his workshop made and sold several thousand pieces and was also the preferred bow of Nicolo Paganini. This and later metal bows proved to be too fragile because the walls were only paper-thin.
Read more about the history of the violin bow in this article.
A tube made from high-density carbon fiber could provide significant improvements over pernambuco.
Some carbon bows are made for 25% out of carbon fiber. The other materials are mainly epoxy. That doesn't resonate well and causes a dull sound lacking badly in overtones.
Good quality carbon fiber bows are made for around 60% of carbon fiber and offer much better resonance. They offer better quality bows for a lot less money than wood bows. Think of brands like CodaBow, JonPaul and Müsing.
Only high-density carbon fiber bows, with 80% carbon fiber like Arcus bows, offer better sound and playability than pernambuco. They offer something extra and special above wood bows.
A violin bow with a clip in frog like those used until the early 19th Century weighs only about 40 grams. Its agility allows Bach and Mozart to be played with the appropriate delicacy. The heavy romantic Tourte bows ended up with a weight of about 60 grams. The ideal weight that allows a violinist to play the entire repertoire is half way between the two extremes, at around 50 grams.
We think a light bow is weak and wobbly. With wood bows we are used to compromise between light and wobbly or stiff and heavy. With carbon fiber we can make bows that are light AND stiff, making it easy to perform all bowing techniques and all repertoire.
I've tested and reviewed carbon fiber violin bows from $ 29 up to $ 8,000 and everything in between by the brands Fiddlerman, CodaBow, Müsing, JonPaul and Arcus. Yup, all the big makers and innovators! (and a random eBay bow)
I hired a cameraman and found the amazing concert violinist Giedrė Mundinaitė-Leenhouwers (who has an exquisite bowing technique and a great nose for good bows) available to demonstrate and discuss all of these bows.
The result is a beautiful e-book with tons of information, reviews and demonstration videos. It
