Influence of the Bridge , Island Area , Bass Bar and Soundpost on the Acoustic Modes of the Violin

The influence of the bridge, f -holes, island area, soundpost and bass bar on the vibro-acoustic modes of the violin has been investigated over a wide range of frequencies using COMSOL shell structure finite element (FEA) computations. The body shell modes other than in the island area have been strongly damped to reveal the smoothly varying frequency spectrum of the bridge-island area input filter controlling the energy transfer from the bowed string to the radiating shell modes. Of special relevance is the so-called BH-feature between around 2-3 kHz, often correlated with the quality of fine sounding violins.