WHEN BLUEGRASS FIDDLE LEGEND BOBBY HICKS decided he had to have a five-string violin, he sat down right there in the dressing room of the Golden Nugget in Vegas and drilled another hole in the pegbox and tailpiece of the fiddle he was using, and stuck a peg in there. That must have been about 1963. Most players and makers are not so bold. But the attraction of having a single instrument that can serve as a combination viola and violin in one’s hand is considerable and, for some, irresistible. Orchestra teachers are discovering the convenience of not having to juggle a violin and a viola during class.

These days, an increasing number of fiddlers, jazz, and pop players in every style are discovering uses for the tremendous sonorities possible with the extra string.

Indeed, acoustic five-string violins have gone from being a rarity to a viable option for many string players. Until recently, the instrument had a reputation for being awkward to play, due to the tight string spacing, or for having a generally uneven sound with a weak C or E string, depending on the design. Most luthiers have shied away from investing time in a project that might use up months of work only to fail, but as interest and demand have increased, a few pioneering luthiers have solved the challenges of constructing a five-string acoustic instrument that sounds good.

With all the current experimentation and even larger manufacturers offering a five-string option, it seems the idea has caught on and is likely here to stay. People who play five-string instruments seem to love them and don’t want to go back.

Though not all fives are successful instruments, it’s phenomenal to play those that are. We’re sure to see more of them as makers discover reliable designs.

Only time will tell how large a slice of the market five-strings will command. There are several innovative and noteworthy luthiers advancing the cause.

In fact, it was not the impromptu five-string crafted backstage at the Golden Nugget, but an extraordinary fiddle built in the late ’70s for Hicks by Harvey Keck that served as an inspiration for Silakowski.

“We were at the Opry when Randy was playing there and Randy said, ‘Let’s go look at Bobby Hicks’ fiddle.’ We got the string spacing and some of the measurements off that fiddle.”

Silakowski made a couple more models to those measurements, using a slightly longer string length of 13¼ inches, then took advice from viola maker Mark Womack, who suggested that Silakowski just take a regular violin pattern and enlarge it slightly on a copy machine.

“Everyone liked the string spacing from Bobby’s fiddle,” Silakowski says, “and I wound up making the fiddle deeper in the ribs, 29 cm at the neck and 33 cm at the endpin.

“That gave us some more air space, too.”

Silakowski works closely with customers to set up each violin to that player’s satisfaction, so there is no set formula for determining the curve of the finger-board or bridge. “The top thickness is pretty normal—I don’t do anything different there,” he says. “I do make the bass bar a little heavier—about one millimeter taller and a half mil wider—it’s not much. The C string doesn’t really put that much more pressure on the top since the string length is short.”

Silakowski makes the necks as small as he can. “Since the neck is wider, there’s more ebony and it will still be strong even if you trim the neck way down,” he explains, “which I usually do. There’s no reason to have a big neck on these instruments.”

And there are other modifications that can help keep the five-string violin from becoming too cumbersome. For instance, Silakowski has started to use 3/4-size tuning pegs in order to keep the pegbox a more normal size, though he keeps a full-size shaft on them to forestall breakage.

In addition, he has been trying to get the Wittner company to make a more aesthetically pleasing five-string tailpiece, as he, along with many others, feel that the Thomastik (the only one currently available) is too heavy.

Silakowski is confident that he can adjust the power and brightness of his fiddles to a large degree in his choice of tonewoods and his results have borne this out. His tastes run from Lombardy poplar, slightly less dense than maple, to Italian spruce and anything in between, as long as he can be assured of its age. His favorite wood these days is an Adirondack spruce that was used in the old Gibson mandolins and Martin guitars and still finds its way into some high-end guitars.

“It starts off sounding real bright, but after only about 30 hours of playing, it changes a lot and darkens up,” he says. “I’ve seen it happen over and over and it’s predictable now.”

The demand for Silakowski’s five-string instruments is intense, and growing all the time.

“I don’t care if I never build another four-string,” he says.

He solves the string-spacing dilemma by keeping the neck close to normal width but pushing the strings out closer to the edges of the fingerboard. “I found that players were bothered more by a wider neck or closer string spacing than the strings being closer to the edge of the board,” he says.

The late Oregon luthier John Sullivan’s last two instruments happened to be five-string violins, both built from a violin-size pattern. Both turned out spectacularly well and capped a legacy of great instruments.

“I was just responding to players,” he said before his death last year. “They wanted a five-string with a low C, not a viola with a high E. That’s all. And as far as pulling it off goes, I’ve thought about it for 15 years. I took it on as a fun project and put everything I’ve learned into it in hopes of success.”

He turned to Stradivari for inspiration.

“I took a Strad Messiah pattern and put his biggest specs into it,” Sullivan said. “It’s a slightly longer string length because it’s Strad’s long scale, 14¼ inches. The width at the middle bouts, I left alone because the big thing in five-strings is that you need bow room. I increased the top arching about three millimeters. It’s about 18 millimeters. And then I tilted the fingerboard about a millimeter and a half down on the C side. That’s to mainly give you bow room on the E string. Between the arching and the tilting of the fingerboard, it gave more clear space to bow. I wasn’t afraid to open up the f-holes just a little because of the arching at the top. So the air space is slightly more, from the more arched top and large body, but it still corresponds to a Strad, the realm of a normal-size violin, but beefy.

“In the recurve around the edges of the arching, I went quite thin so you got a good diaphragm effect, so it would support the low end, and then I thinned out the back to a degree to help bring out the treble because thickening the top decreases the treble a little bit.”

Sullivan also modified the endblock. “I doubled the width of it and halved the depth of it and elongated the body,” he said. “So I gained almost ten millimeters in the top length, and back length, once again to support the low end.”

AMANDA KOWALSKI; INSTRUMENT BY JONATHAN COOPER
A PEG UP: Jonathan Cooper’s pegbox design.

He also took great care with the selection of the wood for the five-strings. “You might order 20 pieces and return 19, you know. But the German spruce tops on these two violins are incredible,” he said.

Sullivan looked for very tight grain at least around the bridge area, but light in weight.

He enjoyed modifying the pegbox, elongating it for the extra peg. “It was fun trying to get a nice smooth curve with plenty of room,” he said. “And I tapered the wall thickness at the nut so there’s a little more string clearance.”

The result is one of the most lively and responsive five-strings that this writer has played.

“Just from a technical standpoint, you can’t get a violin body to produce a C fundamental,” the award-winning Maine luthier says. “The violin actually doesn’t even have enough air resonance to produce the G string. What you’re hearing is overtones, just for the G string. So you really can’t get the C sound. If you’re using a pickup or a microphone, it’s not that important. But I wanted to make something that was a true stand-alone acoustic instrument that would actually project. The only way that I could do that would be to make a larger instrument.

“Violas historically have had a wider range of designs than the violin, and they can be small.”

For his five-string violas, Cooper went back to a Brescian-style body. This flexible model was developed by 16th- and 17th-century makers in the Italian city of Brescia, north of Cremona. The middle section of the instrument—the C-bouts, f-holes, and bridge height—remains consistent in size while the rest of the body can be made longer or shorter.

“It’s nice to be able to go back and pick up an old method and say, this really is very flexible,” Cooper says. “You can change it at will and it works, which is pretty cool. The Brescians’ construction method was simple, very easy to execute and it would always hang together. So you can make a viola that’s 15 inches long, 16 inches long: they all sound good.”

The Dahlia is close to standard violin length and size but relatively broad across the belly, with a rounded lower bout reminiscent of the old “pochette” dancing-master pocket fiddles. Bartig says he listened closely to many string players before making the decision to employ a wider “chest,” producing a larger vibrating area around the bridge. He also credits the players for suggesting that the string spacing on the five-string instrument be the same as a four-string violin.

While the tone is not powerful, it is friendly and even. The C string fits well tonally with the other strings. Indeed, the Dahlia reminds me of a travel guitar: a humble, balanced instrument, well made, fun, and easy to pick up and play.