Another Rebec Page
I was inspired to write this as a result of stumbling upon Paul Butler's excellent The Rebec Page. I was
thoroughly heartened to discover that there was someone else on the planet interested in
rebecs. The fact that they had also designed and made their own was almost too good to be
true: I am not alone, nor is my beloved rebec.
I make no apologies to, indeed it is intended as a compliment to Paul that my webpage
broadly follows the format of his. I certainly couldn't add anything to the superb
historical research presented by Paul and I learned a lot myself from reading it
(especially the evolution of the pegbox). What I feel moved to do is to recall my
own rebec-making experience, especially as so much of it mirrors Paul's.
The first and, so far, only rebec making chapter of my life spanned 1979 to 1984 (exact
dates questionable: it was a long time ago!) I discovered music in my mid-teens. Much to
the amusement of my peers, the breadth of my taste rapidly broadened to include, amongst
others, Genesis, Bach, Rush, Mozart, Brubeck, Jethro Tull, Beethoven, Motorhead, Dowland,
Josquin Des Pres, Yes etc etc. I am not sure exactly why I decided to make a rebec; at the
time I was a pretty good violinist and was teaching myself to play the guitar. I was also
a teenager and hence poor. I seem to recall that I wanted an early instrument to play but
couldn't afford to buy one and decided that the rebec looked the easiest to make.
Sadly, doubtless due to the impetuosity of youth, I didn't document the birth of my rebec
in any detail and I have only one contemporary photograph. My prototype and final
instruments however are still in perfect condition and I still possess my original working
plans, now over 25 years old.
My initial research involved finding as many images of rebecs as I could. I had and indeed
still have a small but useful collection of LPs which have plenty of pictures and sounds
of rebecs. I was also fortunate enough to live within travelling distance of The Early Music Shop in Bradford and my Dad and I went
there on a field trip. I still remember it clearly: it was like entering Aladdin's Cave.
It consisted of a vast room stuffed with viols in racks, lutes hanging from the wall,
harpsichords and virginals, glass cases full of racketts and crumhorns and real rebecs
made by Bernard Ellis. I got to play one. And a lute. Imagine yourself as Harry Potter in
Diagon Alley and you have some idea of how I felt! I also discovered how expensive the the
raw materials were, not to mention the specialist luthier's tools...
I still have my two precious copies of The Early Music Shop catalogue and a small
selection of the instrument photos in them are shown below.
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The front cover of the Early Music Shop catalogue, ca.1979 |
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A hurdy gurdy by Bernard Ellis |
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8-Course Lute Kit The EMS lute kit is based on an instrument by Giovanni Hieber who worked in Venice towards the end of the 16th century. Within the constraints of lute making we have made the construction of the kit as easy and as straightforward as possible. The delicate shape of the lute body is achieved by providing a rigid polyurethane mould around which the ribs are bent. The blocks at both ends of the body are attached to this mould making it impossible to deviate from the predetermined shape and dimensions. Swiss pine for the soundboard is sanded to only 2mm in thickness and the 11 ribs which form the body are pre-shaped and sanded from attractive figured sycamore. A special device is included in each kit which facilitates clamping the ribs during construction of the body. Solid rosewood is used for the fingerboard, bridge and pegs and the pegbox itself is ready assembled with taper reamed holes. An excellent set of lute strings, comprehensive instruction manual and full scale drawing complete the kit. Construction time: 90-120 hours A challenging kit. (text from EMS catalogue, 7th ed.) |
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I never actually saw one of these instruments. The photo hints that there is some very elaborate purfling on the soundboard and fingerboard. Note the rose above the bridge. I liked the shape and appearance of this rebec and I based my final instrument on it. |
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A page from the 7th edition EMS catalogue showing a family of rebecs, from soprano to bass made by Bernard Ellis. There is no indication of scale, although I would guess that the tenor and bass instruments would be stood upright on the player's lap and played like a viol. |
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Some early string instruments made by Progress Instruments. They have Swiss pine soundboards, beech/ebony fingerboards and black moulded polystyrene backs. The school I attended bought a lute and I played it in public in a music recital, Mounsier's Alman I think. It actually sounded pretty good and was certainly a match for my ability at the time! |
The Prototype
To start with I didn't intend making a prototype but by the time it was finished the
learning curve was only just shallowing and the resulting instrument was so bad I had to
try again. The photo below was, I think, taken in 1982 and shows the finished but unstrung
prototype with the partially finished body of my final instrument. Note that the pegbox is
still solid with only pilot holes drilled and that the neck is still far from shaped.
I was given a block of Columbian pine for the body. Although this is fairly sturdy as
softwoods go, it is still completely unsuitable for the body of an instrument as I found
out as construction proceeded. I began by having the pear-shaped outline of the body cut
out with a bandsaw. This was, as I recall, the only powertool used on either of the
instruments. The overall shape of the outside surface of the body was formed with a
combination of sawcuts, chisel and a convex base spokeshave - an extremely useful tool. I
intended to carve the pegbox from the same piece as the body as I couldn't imagine a
reliable way for a beginner to bond a separate pegbox to the neck. With the outside
roughly the right shape (pegbox uncarved) I started to hollow out the inside. On the
prototype this was done the hard way: with a gouging chisel and mallet. Unfortunately, as
I was approaching the final thickness, the body split with a huge crack running along the
hollow portion! I successfully glued it together although the crack line can clearly be
seen in the photo below:
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| This and all subsequent photos are recent. They were taken with an Olympus C2 2.0 megapixel digital camera and downloaded via the USB port. | A spokeshave |
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This is the disaster that was the prototype's pegbox. To be fair, it looks worse here than it does in real-life. Even so, its history is clearly visible. The body, neck and pegbox were intended to be carved from the same piece although I discovered that pine is almost completely useless for carving such a small, intricate part as this and it gradually disintegrated as work proceeded. I lost patience with it and sawed it off in a fit of pique. The new pegbox was carved from beech which is also a difficult wood, being dense and brittle. I included a dowel length as part of the carving and cut a corresponding groove in the top side of the neck stub. However, the dowel snapped off and out of frustration I drilled a hole and inserted a dowel to hold the pegbox in place and applied large amounts of epoxy resin in and around the joint. I even embedded a strip of cloth in the resin for good measure! The dowel, resin and cloth are clearly visible in the photo. |
| This is a much more flattering shot of the finished prototype. The
classical guitar colour scheme reflects the fact that I was playing a lot of guitar at the
time as well. The polyurethane varnish actually produced an excellent finish and was built
up slowly from many thin coats applied with a cloth. After each coat was dry, it was
smoothed off with fine wire wool and cleaned with white spirit. The fingerboard was made from a piece of teak driftwood. Teak is very oily and I made the mistake of varnishing it - it took literally months and months before it ceased to be tacky. The nuts at each end of the string length were cut from the thighbone of a cow (local butcher). Cutting fresh bone with a hacksaw produces a disgusting smell! Bone is very easy to polish with a cloth and some rubbing compound, finishing off with toothpaste. |
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The soundboards on both instruments were major successes. I knew that the best soundboards are made from quartersawn, close-grained softwood. (Quartersawn means timber cut radially from the bough leaving the grain perpendicular to the surface) They should also be formed from two matching halves, cut from the same plank and bonded down the middle. So were my rebec soundboards. I obtained the pine from the local builders' yard and I remember being very fussy about which offcut I wanted, to the bemusement of the trader! After planing to thickness the surface was finished by careful scraping with a razorblade as I had read that sanding clogs the grain. This seems to be true as the subsequent varnishing really brought out the translucency and sheen of the wood.
The instrument was successfully strung - gut violin strings (g d a), makeshift tailpiece from beech and the bridge now on my final instrument. I was delighted to find that it sounded like a rebec.
The Final Instrument
By this time I knew (and, I am pleased to say, still know) a fair amount about the techniques of rebec-making and I set out to make my next attempt as near professional quality as I could get. I already had a working rebec so I was in no rush.
Here are some views of the finished instrument:
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Front view |
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Side view |
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Back view |
The final instrument is of a much higher build quality than the prototype. It is made in one piece from a block of Phillipine mahogany. (I doubt if it was cut from a sustainable forest, but 20 years ago such environmental concerns were only just being expressed.) I chose this wood simply because it was available and within my budget. I would have preferred maple...
As before, the outline was cut with a bandsaw. This time, however, the bulk of the hollowing out was done before the shape of the back was finalised to avoid the splitting. Also, most of the waste was carefully drilled out using a brace and bit to avoid the impact forces produced by the gouging chisel. The inside was then brought to shape with a small chisel and a light mallet! The back was shaped as before although this time I constructed a makeshift thickness gauge from a coathanger and a couple of pencil stubs, the pencils rubbing a mark on the parts which were still too thick. I used a similar idea for the soundboard.
(Work was suspended for a couple of years at the point shown in the earlier photo as I was too busy with 6th form, beer, etc)
The pegbox is the part which really distinguishes this instrument from its predecessor and I am still to this day impressed with the results.
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The pegbox was successfully carved from the same piece as the neck and body. I did not risk attempting such elaborate decoration on the back as before and the result is also in keeping with the simplicity of the rest of the instrument. |
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The hollowed out interior. Note the gut strings, bone nut and natural
rosewood fingerboard. The plastic pegs were meant as a cheap, temporary measure but I have no intention of replacing them now. |
As with the prototype, the soundboard was made from two matching, quartersawn spruce boards which were planed and scraped. Like Paul, I decided to reverse the direction of the soundholes having the 'C' pointing inwards in order to increase the width of the tension-bearing centre section. There are also two bars running lute style across the width of the table just above and below the 'C' holes. I figured that the thin soundboard may have eventually warped under the force of the tensioned strings. I now think I may have been a bit pessimistic here and the bars may even have subdued the tone - this will never be known.
Inspired by the Hansford rebec pictured above, I cut a simple star rose in the upper part of the table shown in the photo below:
In the twenty or so years since the instrument was finished, I have noticed that the join between the two halves of the soundboard has parted very slightly in the region around the rose. It has got no wider within the last decade and may be as a result of the spruce not having had time to season fully before I started working with it. It is not serious. The fingerboard is carved from a piece of rosewood 'scrap' I picked up cheaply at a local craft fair.
I cheated rather with the trimmings: the pegs are plastic and although hardly authentic do have the virtue of not sticking which wooden pegs do in even slightly imperfect holes. The end button is ebony however and the nut is bone. The tailpiece was cut from the remaining rosewood and the bridge, which originally adorned the prototype, is beech.
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Here is the finished rebec next to my full-size violin. Note that even
though the rebec is much shorter, it has the same sounding length. Any shorter and the
instrument would be impossible to play with adult sized fingers. Also, why do rebecs have
such long fingerboards? The only way the player can change from a higher position back to
1st position is if the instrument is played upright like a viol. Maybe this was sometimes
the case with the treble rebec held this way when the player was seated but held under the
chin (or armpit as I prefer) when stood up. Sound: again it sounds like a rebec. It is rather quiet, especially in the lower part of its register. I suspect that this may be due partly to the G string which is under a lower tension than the A string and needs coaxing when bowing to get it to vibrate cleanly (it feels a bit like bowing a minature double-bass). When played on the A string it has a strident, nasal and clean tone which I am pleased with - this string is under the highest tension and vibrates much more readily. Anyone with a knowledge of acoustics will also realise that instruments of this size and construction are bound to suffer with volume, especially in the lower register, hence nowadays we play violins and 'cellos rather than rebecs and bigger rebecs. A decent set of matching gut violin strings will probably greatly improve the lower register as the ones on at the moment were found in my violin case's bilge tank. |
| This is a photo of my original plans. The outlines were drawn in quite
faint pencil and the photo needed considerable image enhancement even to get it to this
standard. The squares are 2cm by
2cm. The positions of the two bars on the underside of the soundboard can be seen here as can the design for a bow which I started but haven't finished. Also the C holes are the design I used on the prototype. |
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Incidentally, my trademark 'streb' is a contraction of 'Steve Rebec' and is the name I got at school when I started making these instruments. Am I the only person in the world with a rebec-based nickname?
If you have enjoyed reading this page or wish to know more, please contact me at spr@streb.co.uk
Steve Rouse June 2005
