D'Addario Kaplan Violin Rosin - Artcraft Rosin for Violin, Cello, Bass, Viola Bows - Dark, No. 7

This rosin is relatively lower in dust than some others, its sound is immediate, loud, and clear. Using it in seasons when the air is humid or dry hasn't given me any problems so far. The only downside I can think of is if you don't wipe down your strings after each session and you let it dry on the strings, or put too much on the bow and let it dry. Then it can have a little too much grip, and get a little screechy if you're a beginner violinist with heavy-handed bow technique. Otherwise, I like that it is easy and quick to apply and easily allows a loud and resonant sound. It's mostly trouble-free, and makes a good default choice of rosin.

This so far is an excellent product that, being a dark rosin, may be best for the winter months and/or cellos. Maybe it will work for humid climate violin too?The round rosin cake format is nice because it avoids hair breakage and also wastage *if* you use it properly. This means rotating it to all angles evenly rather than just digging a gutter into it on one angle every time, which guarantees you waste half of the cake carelessly. You can roll the bow a bit to ensure even coverage on all exposed hair surfaces.This rosin needed no sanding or scoring to start working, it went on immediately even though shiny. I don’t recommend doing anythin special to prepare it for use.What you are trying to do with rosin and your bowing in general is to have loud, rich tones with strong fundamental frequency, smooth, warm attacks unless you really dig in to bite the string, and no hitches or scritches even on fortissimo double stops down near the frog.The naïf or ignorant teacher may try to explain the latter as simply a symptom of poor bowing technique; but I’ve found bows can be made more or less immune to hitches and scritches by removing any bad, over-sticky rosin (by playing it out or cleaning with denatured alcohol) and playing-in the hairs themselves to avoid any rough patches that induce the ugly turbulence. Because that process sounds simply dreadful, use both a mute and hearing protection to do it. I haven’t broken many hairs doing that. Also, one needs to clean off the rosin buildup on the strings frequently, I find kimwipes the best to do this.Better rosin will be more immune to these effects, and importantly, less rosin should be applied to the frog end of the hair, as excess pressure is easily applied there and that area doesn’t need much help being loud. I wince when I see people scrubbing extra rosin into the frog area: why are you doing that? Probably just something that hasn’t been countered with enough science.Or you could ignore all that advice and just focus on bowing technique so perfect you can sound smooth even with a horrible bow. If I was in the business of selling lessons, not to mention expensive bows and rehairings, I might encourage that level of ignorance. But following this program I’ve made cheap student bows sound nice even if their balance and bounce won’t ever be terrific.

I'm not a rosin expert. This is the first standard-quality rosin I've bought. I'd been using Super-Sensitive Dark that I bought for $3, until I got this. I think this is quite a bit better. It doesn't gum up the strings or the bow hair like the SS did. It leaves a dust on the top, but that's not gummy either, and it's easier to remove. It seems that there is a lot less dust because I don't need to apply it as often as the SS. I apply it something like every 5 hours of playing. I think it grips the strings better too. I should have tried something like this sooner. So if you've been using only cheap rosins, go ahead and risk a few bucks on this. You might find that you're not spending any more relative to the cheap rosin because you won't need to apply it as often. I'm in the Midwest, and I've been using it year 'round.On the other hand, you could consider it cheap, since you get a lot of rosin for the money. My cake is 9/16" thick and over 1 7/8" in diameter, so it is going to last a long time.

I bought this dark rosin to replace the light breaking into pieces rosin that was included in my inexpensive violin from amazon a while back.It looks like it will do the job nicely, I haven't used it yet. It came in a cloth pouch and then wrapped in a soft felt like cloth. The back of the rosin was stuck to the cloth and when I pulled it off there was fiber residue left on it. I don't know if I was supposed to leave it sticking to the cloth while applying to the bow strings or not. I am a beginner, just making some noises for my enjoyment without the stress of perfection.

My daughter is new to the violin. I originally purchased the super cheapie rosin for her (I didn't know any better!). She just had a dickens of a time with that stuff. It was too dry for her to actually get any on her bow.I decided to look online for rosin information. Fiddlerman, which is a dot-com, recommended D'Addario on his site, calling it a very good, low-priced rosin. His site only had it in dark & we wanted light. So, we came to Amazon & found it here.My daughter finds it MUCH easier to use this rosin than the other stuff. We have not noticed any white dust from this rosin on her violin after she plays. It did take her a couple of tries to hold the cloth just right, since the super cheapie rosin came in a little box sort of thing, which was a bit easier. It didn't take her long to get the hang of it though & now she loves using this rosin.We definitely recommend this rosin to anyone looking for something better than that cheap other stuff.

I was taking fiddling classes, the teacher said dark rosin gave a better sound. This was a good price, I really like it!