Stamell Strings moved into our current location in Amherst, Mass, in 1995. The building had been a yarn store for many years. Before that it was a dental office and a rooming house. The building was built c.1900. The yarn shop used to have weaving classes upstairs in what is now our workshop. When we moved in there was a gray carpet on the floor, wall to wall. While not ideal for a woodworking workshop, we made it work for the past 31 years. Just this month, we pulled out the old rug and put in a new floor, one we could easily sweep and keep clean.

I’ve always been attracted by the Transcendentalist writers.

Emerson, Hawthorne, Thoreau, Whitman: these writers spoke to me and seemed to have paved the way for later 20th century writers who influenced the Civil Rights movement and the counterculture of the 1960s. When I went to Hobart College in 1974 I discovered a plaque on the steps of the main quad of campus with the quote “the ends pre-exist in the means”. I knew I was in the right place.​

The quote is attributed to Ralph Waldo Emerson. For a while I wondered what that meant. What are the ends, and what are the means? What did it mean that they “pre-exist”?

While in college I started to make string instruments. Nothing was quite so exciting as taking a piece of wood and turning it into an instrument that could make music.
​
There were steps that needed to be followed: creating a drawing, making forms, assembling the materials, sharpening tools, joining plates and making sides, making the top and back….it was a long process, and the final product took quite a bit of time to produce. But the process was fun, interesting, and challenging.​

The process was so engrossing and rewarding I realized that it was the process, not the end result, that mattered most. The end result would flow from the process.

I believe I found the meaning of the Emerson quote. If you concentrate on the present and apply yourself to the present, the “ends” flow from that attention and effort you give. Of course, life is not always fair, and the “ends” are never guaranteed.

In my case, I’ve tried to live by the famous Emerson quote. My goal in working with stringed instruments was never to get rich or famous. My goal has always been to learn as much as I can and to practice a craft that brings so many wonderful disciplines together: music, craft, history, sociology, geography, politics, and even religion.

For me, the ends continue to pre-exist in the means.​

Matt Stamell

When I was in my early teens I started to play guitar. My brother Gene was in college, it was the late 60s, and the Vietnam War was in full swing. The resistance came mostly from college students who opposed the draft and the war, and music was a major medium of the resistance. Folk music became my teacher and my life.​

When I went to college I was singing, playing, and writing songs. I loved the music of Bob Dylan, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raiit, Tom Rush, Simon and Garfunkel, Joan Baez, Tom Paxton, and many more. I then started to listen to jazz, stringband music, blues, more folk like Bill Staines, Dave Mallett, Cindy Kallet, and classical.

My journey with classical music was mentored by my beloved professor, Marvin Bram.

Marvin (pictured to the right and with me below, ) encouraged me when I started to make instruments. He introduced me to the music of Bach, Brahms, Beethoven. He loved the viola and made a few instruments himself. He knew a lot about instrument construction, varnish, history.​

He taught Intellectual History at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He had a theory that tied the advent of stringed instruments starting with Gaspar da Salo to ancient ways of thinking. He often called Bach the greatest teacher that the world has ever seen; the many lines of music all converging to form a Fugue was, to Marvin, the embodiment of the workings of the pre-historic mind.

In class we listened to Bach Sonatas and Partitas, followed the score, and could see how the great composer made us hear 2 notes when only one was being played. That was the lesson that Marvin was imparting. He calls in “fusion”, filling in rather than separating the world into component parts.​

Why do we love old violins? We love them because they gather the past, the present, and the future into a moment of beauty. They embody history, craft, alchemy, and music into a thing of beauty, something that endures and elevates the human spirit.

I’ve always loved wood and wooden objects. My father (pictured on the left) was an amateur woodworker; he made furniture for all his kids and many of his friends in the evenings in his small workshop in our basement. For a while we owned a 2nd home in southern Maine. It was called The Mill because it had been a grist mill in the 1800s. It was a post and beam building with wood floors, walls, ceilings, doors: it was made entirely of wood with some brick walls thrown in as well. To walk into The Mill felt like walking into a warm hug. The smell of the ancient wood was overwhelming and the patina of the planks made you feel right at home.

The call of woodworking was also overwhelming for me. I was an English major in college, but I too dabbled in woodworking and I was playing guitar at that time. One night my father came home from work with an Appalachian dulcimer. My father was a building contractor in the Boston area, and he worked with many architects, one of whom was also a maker of dulcimers. My father presented me with the dulcimer, and by coincidence that night I went to a concert in Marblehead to see Lorraine Lee, the premier player of Appalachian dulcimer at that time. My future took a turn.

At Hobart college a professor was offering dulcimer making to freshmen as a side course. I took it and made my first instrument. I was hooked. My friend John and I started to make dulcimers in whatever crude workshop we could cobble together on campus. We worked out of small rooms or in the basement of a house where friends were living. By the time I graduated college I had made my first guitar, using books and gathering as much information as I could.

After graduation I enrolled at Boston University Program in Artisanry where a master maker of viola da gambas was teaching, Don Warnock. That was my introduction to professional instrument making.

I’ve never really looked back. After all these years, wood still calls to me. I have made around 25 guitars and 7 violins. I’ve made some furniture. I’ve done carpentry of all kinds. These days I do most of the cello set ups here at our shop. As I sit at my workbench with a lifetime of work mostly behind me, I realize that I made the right choice, and that the satisfaction of working with wood has been constant through my life.


Matt Stamell

Theoretically tariffs have historically been used to spur domestic production of goods and to protect American workers from foreign competition. That sounds like a good idea until you dig into the details. Take cars for example; most cars have parts that are made in many locations. Most American made cars have parts made in Canada and Mexico, or even China. The same applies to many products that we use every day. Sometimes the parts travel back and forth across borders during the production process.

Should tariffs be charged every time a part crosses a border?

The manufacture of string instruments is not so different from cars or other products. Wood grows in European or Canadian forests, is shipped to mills for cutting and processing, and is then shipped to the place of manufacture in Europe or China. Most student grade instruments are made in China. The United States does not have any manufacturing of student grade stringed instruments. All the “step up” or “rental” grade instruments come from a foreign country. The same is true of bow production.

Coffee is not grown in the United States, nor bananas. Will tariffs encourage domestic production of coffee or bananas?

Nor will tariffs encourage manufacturing of string instruments.

It’s a shame that the insecurity and anger of one man can sow so much chaos and anxiety in so many businesses.

Small shops such as ours have been absorbing the added costs for a while now. Soon, supplies of pre-tariff goods will run out and higher prices will start to hit. Prices will rise, and the American people will bear the added costs.

Please continue to support your local shops; it’s an important way to make your voice heard during these turbulent times.

Sincerely,

Matt Stamell

I just returned from a trip to Italy where I attended Mondomusica, a yearly event in the town of Cremona.

Everyone knows that Cremona is the center of the violin universe; it’s the town where the greats of our trade plied their craft: Stradivari, Guarneri, Amati, Bergonzi, Storioni, and many others. It is still a major center of violin making to this day.

It is home to one of the primary violin making schools in the world, as well as home to over 100 violin makers who have settled there producing instruments for players and shops from around the world.

I attended the yearly fair called Mondomusica. Suppliers of instruments, bows, cases, wood, and parts for the violin trade come from all parts of the world to exhibit their wares. This year I helped my Belgian supplier of Pierre Marcel instruments at their booth. 
​

How do we know who made an instrument? How do we know if it is authentic? How do we know the proper value of an instrument or bow?

Like paintings, instruments and bows are valued according to the maker, the condition, the provenance, and the documentation. Sound may play a small role in the value, but it is not the main determinant of price.

Ultimately, a player must trust that they are being charged a fair price. A seller of instruments and bows must know the market, know the value of makers throughout the long history of violin and bow making, and be able to justify the price being asked based on other examples by the same maker.

A good seller will stand behind the sale, guarantee the condition of the instrument or bow at the time of the sale, and be willing to accept the instrument or bow back in trade in the future. The buyer should trust that they will be taken care of in the future. Like all relationships, trust is the most important element in the seller/buyer dynamic.


Sincerely,

Matt Stamell

I tell you this story to illustrate that sound is very subjective and prone to extraneous circumstances. It may have to do with our mood, or the opinion of a teacher, stand partner, or colleague. It may have to do with preconceived notions.

I know that personally I may play an instrument on one day and not really love it, but when I play it another day, I do.

Why is that? Do instruments change their sound from day to day, or do I change?​

The answer is that both are true. Instruments respond to temperature and humidity, and the sound can change from day to day depending. I also change from day to day. Some days I am more rested, more patient, more nervous or agitated, more happy or less happy.

A motto of Stamell Strings is “What We Sell Is Sound”. We mean this both literally and figuratively!

Ultimately our product is just that: sound.

The most expensive violin in the world may not be the best sounding.

The best sounding is only that if you, the player, loves the sound. Instruments are not priced by sound; rather, they are priced like paintings, by the maker, the condition, the provenance, the country of origin, the historical context.

Many factors influence how a violin sounds. Some factors are built in: the thickness of the top and back, the construction of the archings, the height of the ribs, the thickness of the varnish. These factors are generally things that will not and should not be altered.

Other factors can be altered: the fit of the soundpost, the wood the post is made from, the thickness, height, and wood of the bridge, the tailpiece material, length and adjustment, the “scoop” of the fingerboard and the “projection” to the body, the type of string: these are all factors that influence the sound of a violin (also viola and cello) greatly!

Stamell Strings deals in sound. We try to present instruments that we feel sound great.

Our workshop is expert in making and adjusting instruments to sound their best, regardless of the price of the instrument.

If you are looking for a new instrument, a new sound, we have a broad selection of sounds to choose from.

We invite your inquiry and look forward to helping you select the right instrument FOR YOU!

Sincerely,
Matt Stamell