Nittaku Acoustic Alternative

You may have some from OSP (Virtuoso or Virtuoso +) but they are not cheap either

Buy a used one on the for sale board. I just got one from joeb and i believe a seller in europe has an even cheaper one with a small ding for sale now with worldwide shipping available. There is really no reason to buy a blade new unless it just came out.

Yeah Peterpan is very close.

To me, the Latika felt pretty different to be honest thou

I'm not aware of any evidence that Nittaku use hide glue: they claim the technique used is similar to the production of string instruments, not the glue. And nowadays hide glue is no longer commonly used for producing string instruments. For a full discussion, see my latest posts in the Acoustic Clan thread, starting here.
If you have any insight, I'd love to know. Please post it there!

Actually, there would be an easy way to know, but it implies heating up a violin up to the melting point of hide glue, which would destroy the blade. Anyone has a broken Acoustic or Violin they want to sacrifice for advancing knowledge?

h0n1g wrote: Yeah Peterpan is very close. To me, the Latika felt pretty different to be honest thou

Yeah, actually, my memory probably failed me: Latika is probably more similar to Tenor, or in-between. Only played once with it (too head-heavy).

I was expecting my Latika to be head heavy, but it is actually very well balanced for an offensive wood. Few club mates tried it and none of them mentioned head heaviness. Lovely blade

Im very pleased with my downgraded from RWV to Acoustic which is indeed slower but easier to use overally. However, if you still agree regular Latina is a bit faster with better FL handle and not as head heavy it might be also my blade.

Apart from regular Latika, there's also Carbon which is really expensive and Light or even 7. How about latika 7? No one talked about it.

Dr.Cho wrote: A Simple google search will tell you most... if not all these violin blades were made with Hide glue. I believe[...] Don't believe me ...do your own research.

I did, and I could not find any trustworthy source, just rumours and hearsay. Do you have any reliable source?
I translated pages from the Nittaku catalog from JP to EN, but found no evidence of use of hide glue.
I asked Nittaku but got no reply.
The handle of my Violin got detached after a fall, and I repaired it with hide glue. It was not an easy process, and using hide glue industrially for producing laminated wood must be a nightmare. I suppose that if they did, the Nittaku "strings" blades would cost even more.
But there is liquid hide glue, and it may be well possible that Nittaku use that. It does not have the same properties as "normal" hide glue, though.

Anyway, as I said there is only one way to know: take an Acoustic or Violin, and heat it up to 55-60 C. If there's hide glue, it will melt and the layers will come apart. If they don't, it's not hide glue. Anyone brave enough?

If anyone has a broken Violin or Acoustic, let me know.

Sorry for the OT.

PS: hide glue does not stay flexible, it crystallises and becomes hard and brittle when cured. This hardness transmit vibrations very well, a flexible glue layer would dampen vibrations. If you make a drop of hot hide glue, let it cure and then hit it with a hammer: the drop will shatter. Liquid hide glue doesn't dry to that brittle hardness. A drop of Titebond 1 (original) will also shatter; Titebond 2 (premium) and 3 (ultimate) remain somewhat flexible.

Of Course Nittaku didn't reply.