Yes it does, an instrument with four strings, from the tension balance point of view, is much more delicate to manage than a four strings one. Being the bridge “a bridge”, it often happens that, as an example, a bigger second dulls the fourth. Or, a bigger first gives an easier response to the fifth. I write this not as a rule, of course it depends on what you have on the fourth and fifth! But moving one string affects much the others. However, I am not sure I understand your question, could you reword it please?
I am concerned that a fifth string will degrade the tone of the instrument. Almost all of the spallas I have heard (YouTube only) have had five strings and I thought they sounded good.
Am I only hearing super good spallas or is hound sound typical for any given maker?
Well, it’s a bit of an extreme question. They sound good, and they have a good tenor voice. If you compare them in the same room with a “normal” cello, the cello has a bigger sound and resonance, having a much bigger body. But, the tenor voice of the Spalla “cuts through” much easily, so that even playing together with a bigger cello, you can always clearly hear two distinct, different voices, and equally “important”.
From videos, it is difficult to tell (about “any given maker”), as there are little comparisons and we usually don’t know which hardware was used for the recordings.
I think that when you respect correct proportions of the instrument you get to a good result. There is quite a lot to study and experiment about tailpiece projection, bass bar, bridge, and the tone can change dramatically. But it is always clearly a middle instrument, a middle voice. A tenor.
The good question would be why tenor disappeared in the string quartet? Because it was too antagonistic with soprano (violin)? I still don’t have an answer to this.
Does a fifth string add a lot of tension to the instrument? Are there special measures to deal with any extra tension?
Yes it does, an instrument with four strings, from the tension balance point of view, is much more delicate to manage than a four strings one. Being the bridge “a bridge”, it often happens that, as an example, a bigger second dulls the fourth. Or, a bigger first gives an easier response to the fifth. I write this not as a rule, of course it depends on what you have on the fourth and fifth! But moving one string affects much the others. However, I am not sure I understand your question, could you reword it please?
I am concerned that a fifth string will degrade the tone of the instrument. Almost all of the spallas I have heard (YouTube only) have had five strings and I thought they sounded good.
Am I only hearing super good spallas or is hound sound typical for any given maker?
Well, it’s a bit of an extreme question. They sound good, and they have a good tenor voice. If you compare them in the same room with a “normal” cello, the cello has a bigger sound and resonance, having a much bigger body. But, the tenor voice of the Spalla “cuts through” much easily, so that even playing together with a bigger cello, you can always clearly hear two distinct, different voices, and equally “important”.
From videos, it is difficult to tell (about “any given maker”), as there are little comparisons and we usually don’t know which hardware was used for the recordings.
I think that when you respect correct proportions of the instrument you get to a good result. There is quite a lot to study and experiment about tailpiece projection, bass bar, bridge, and the tone can change dramatically. But it is always clearly a middle instrument, a middle voice. A tenor.
The good question would be why tenor disappeared in the string quartet? Because it was too antagonistic with soprano (violin)? I still don’t have an answer to this.
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.