Our extremely popular Neil Gow Pochette has been chosen to be part of Pochette and Kit (another name for a pochette) exhibit at Ringve - the Norwegian National Museum of Musical Instrument. The Neil Gow Pochette is inspired by a pochette in the Burrell Museum in Glasgow, Scotland.

The Neil Gow Pochette, a Transitional rather than Baroque instrument, sounds and plays better than an 18th Century pochette should sound. It sounds sweet and powerful rather than thin and raspy. This is because it, while meticulously authentic on the exterior, uses a bass bar designed by Dr. Don Rickert specifically for the instrument, as well as a sound post placed under the e-string bridge foot in the same position as a modern setup on a Stradivarius violin. It also has extremely large sound holes for such a small instrument developed through much experimentation to obtain the “sweet spot” between projection volume and beautiful tone.

The thin and raspy sound of a typical Baroque pochette has a charm of its own. Some customers desire this Baroque sound in a pochette, which were not known for sounding sweet, powerful or loud. While some pochettes of the late 18th Century had a more or less modern bass bar and sound post, the one in the Burrell Collection has neither. Rather, it and others like it, has a single crude (by today’s standards) bass bar centered under the bridge and NO sound post. The sound holes are also much smaller than those of the Neil Gow Pochette. The photos show these differences. The Glasgow has a period-appropriate surface-mounted neck with some angle-back.

Case for this Pochette

The  "case" for such an instrument would be a felt bag, which we supply at no extra charge. See the cases category for other case options