Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, November 12, 1995 TAG: 9511140004
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MARK MORRISON STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NATURAL BRIDGE STATION LENGTH: Long
And that his quest is no ordinary quest.
But this story doesn't really start with Sam Compton and his bubbling brews. It dates back to 1644, to Cremona, Italy, and the birth of Antonio Stradivari, a man who would become the greatest violin maker the world ever produced - and who would leave behind a mystery that has perplexed mankind since the Renaissance.
What was his secret to building such special violins?
It's a mystery involving unknown varnish recipes, lumber from the Alps, ammonia fumes, ozone chambers, a rocket scientist, and something called Eigenmode patterns.
A seemingly unsolvable mystery.
That is, until now.
Well, maybe.
This is where Sam Compton fits into the story. Compton runs a little-known violin shop in Rockbridge County, where he believes he is on the brink of duplicating something extraordinarily close to a Stradivarius violin. That is, if science doesn't steer him wrong.
Logically, Compton, 40, shouldn't be in this position.
He was raised in Tulsa, Okla., the only child of an oil executive and his school teacher wife, neither of whom were at all musical. Brainy in school, Compton took only one year of shop class, and never imagined that someday he might work with his hands - or, for that matter, with the drill presses and band saws that are now his stock in trade.
In college, he double majored in biology and bio-medical chemistry. After college, he worked for seven passively discontented years in a hospital neuro-trauma unit.
In fact, about the only real hint of the obsession to come were the violin lessons he took in his youth. Later, he played in the Tulsa Pops. It also helped that Compton enjoys a keen understanding of science, and that his late father set him up financially so he could pursue, instead of the almighty dollar, loftier concerns.
That's a luxury most violin makers don't share.
Compton has been a luthier - a person who makes stringed instruments - for more than 15 years. At first, it was a calling he chose because the lifestyle appealed to him. He had visited a mandolin maker who seemed so satisfied toiling away the hours with sawdust underfoot and musical beauty on his mind.
Compton built his first violin strictly from reading books. There are hundreds on violin making. That first violin is the only one of his own violins that he has kept, as a reminder of how far he has come.
To his credit, as rough as it turned out, that first attempt at least looked like a violin. Maybe not to Compton, who shakes his head and grins with disgust when he holds the violin today. But to the novice observer, it showed potential.
And Compton learned from it.
Then several things happened that changed forever the way he pursued his new occupation.
The first was a chance to hold and play and examine a Stradivarius at violin makers convention in Minneapolis.
``I figured all the fillings were going to fall out of my teeth,'' he says.
Only they didn't.
What he discovered instead was that, as sweet and wonderful as that Stradivarius sounded up close, and as solidly as it was constructed, it wasn't really anything magical. It was just a violin, made of wood and glue like any violin - like something he might build himself. Attainable, he thought.
What happened next was perhaps of greater importance. It was an article in the October 1981 issue of Scientific American magazine about a device that measures something called Eigenmode patterns on violins. This device gave violin makers a way to very precisely tune their violin tops and violin bottoms to match the same frequency as a Stradivarius. It was a real step forward in trying to duplicate that unique Stradivarius tone.
For Compton, it also meant that science - something he understood - had a place in violin making. It meant that Eigenmode patterns were only the beginning.
He took an 18-month apprenticeship with a violin maker in Boiling Springs, Pa. He took trips to the Library of Congress and the Smithsonian Institution and elsewhere to examine every Stradivarius he could get his hands on - more than 25 in all.
Then, five years ago, he moved with his wife, Susan, and his mother to Rockbridge County, not far from Natural Bridge. They live on 87 acres of former pasture land overlooking the James River with a divine vista of the Blue Ridge Mountains.
From outside, Compton's shop looks like a two-story house, much like the house he lives in about 50 yards away. There isn't even a sign marking the shop, which he calls Lutherie Meadows.
Inside, however, are all the signs: a room full of lumber, various pieces of machinery, work benches cluttered with tools, a dehumidifier humming in the corner.
And books. Lots of books. ``Antonio Stradivari - His Life and Work: 1644-1737,'' ``Masterpieces of Italian Violin Making 1620-1850,'' and ``The Violin Forms of Antonio Stradivari'' are just a few of the volumes.
A pair of Stradivari posters hang on the wall, and there is a print of a Vincent Van Gogh painting for inspiration.
``He worked all his life and knew that what he was doing was significant,'' Compton says, looking at the Van Gogh print. ``But he was never recognized in his lifetime.''
After 15 years, Compton is now working on only his 29th violin - an admittedly slow pace. Yet, it's a pace well-suited to his methods.
``The truth is, I'm a research scientist. That's first and foremost what I do,'' he explains. ``In my spare time, I occasionally construct violins to test my theories.''
Or, put another way, to solve a mystery.
Nobody knows for sure what made a Stradivarius a Stradivarius. Some say it was the wood. The way it was logged. The way it was stored. Others say it was the varnish. That it contained some secret ingredient. Or maybe it was some trick in Stradivari's craftsmenship.
Compton has gone through all of the theories. Some he embraces. Others he rejects. None of them does he boast as his own.
``If you think you have an original thought, you don't. You just haven't done enough research,'' he says.
He believes the wood is important. For his own work, he imports silver spruce and curly maple from the Alps, the same as Stradivari used.
The theory is that one reason why a Stradivarius sounds so rich is the strength and uniformity of the wood. The wood from the Alps is unique because it grows at about the same rate every year and it grows very slowly. So, the grain in the wood is consistent, making it exceptionally dense and exceptionally strong.
However, Compton does not believe the wood has to be soaked in salt water, as some theorists have suggested, to simulate the way lumber Stradivari used was transported by river through water that had been polluted by a salt mine.
There is also a theory that Stradivari stored his wood in a horse barn where there was a strong concentration of ammonia fumes that affected the sound of his finished violins. Compton found that for his violins, amonia only darkened his wood undesirably.
He makes his own varnish. That's what the concoctions percolating behind his shop are all about. But he doesn't claim to know a secret recipe. He doubts that there is one.
His varnish, he says, is just super refined. He makes it by mixing pure gum spirits of turpentine with the highest grade of linseed oil, both of which he first sends through their own months-long brewing processes.
It's worth it, he says, peering into a jug of linseed oil that's almost as clear as water. ``That's the stuff dreams are made of.''
The theory Compton puts the most faith in came from a rocket scientist who makes violins as a hobby. His idea is that Stradivari somehow bent the top and bottom pieces of wood on his violins before he carved them. This was how he was able to make such thin, yet strong, violins.
For years, modern violin makers have tried carving out their wood tops and bottoms to the same thinness as Stradivari, only to see them crack and split. ``We spent years chasing our tails,'' Compton says.
By bending the wood first, the theory goes, the wood's natural strength is better preserved, and it can be carved more thinly.
Bending the wood has been an altogether different problem.
Again, this is where science comes into play.
To bend his tops and bottoms, Compton basically HUMIDIFIES them, slowly, for a month in a contraption he devised with lightbulbs, a cardboard box, a pan of water and plastic wrap. When they are thoroughly saturated, he fits them into a brace and boils them in water for an hour. The heat allows him to bend the wood to the desired shape.
After the wood pieces dry for two weeks, what remains is just the painstaking process of construction: carving, cutting, sanding, gluing and varnishing.
Of course, there are a few more unconventional steps along the way, like testing those Eigenmode patterns.
``To me, that's as acceptable as using a ruler,'' Compton says, ``but there are people who believe it's weird voodoo.''
Or like his ozone chamber. That's a Rubbermaid trash can rigged with a Jacob's ladder that produces ozone gas. A Jacob's ladder is familiar to anyone who has seen a Frankenstein movie. It's those two wires that create a zapping electrical spark between them.
Compton shuts his violins inside this chamber to brown the wood slightly before they are varnished. This browning process is something Stradivari did by hanging his violins out in the sunlight for a few months. Compton gets the same results with his ozone chamber in two or three hours.
``I could stick mine out in the sun, but grasshoppers would eat them, birds would poop on them, or I would forget them and it would rain on them,'' he says.
Still, it takes Compton about six months and up to 400 man hours to finish one violin, which he prices at $3,000. And he admits that he may be as many as 20 or more violins away yet from that perfect creations.
``I'm like a donkey chasing a carrot dangling from a stick in front of my nose.''
He thinks he's getting there. ``A good violin, that will make people cry when it's played by someone who knows how to play it, it's a big deal. It can change somebody's life. I think it's a noble quest.''
by CNB