Up till now violinists have influenced the sound of individual strings, and of their violin as a whole, by using a mix of strings with different gradations of tension (high, middle, low), or even using strings from different manufacturers.
Due to the entirely different characteristics of individual strings, both strategies strongly affected the tonal balance of the instrument, forcing the violinist or the violin maker to optimize the instrument by a laborious process of trial and error.
Different strings meant that different times were required to play in the strings, and that their playing life-spans differed. Response characteristics were also uneven. The result was that for the violinist the string set did not behave as balanced whole, each string responding unequally to his or her playing.
With Thomastik-Infeld's new concept Infeld Violin, string types can be changed at will, allowing the violinist to affect the overall tonal balance of his or her instrument with ease yet retaining smoothly matched playing characteristics.
At present there are two types of Infeld Violin strings, whereby the red set will produce a rather dark sound on the majority of violins, while the blue set will tend to bring out the instrument's brilliance.
Tonal balance, playing characteristics at any given position and string response are excellent throughout. This is possible due to homogenous string tension at various pitches and design parameters which balance the overall behavior of the set irrespective of the combination of strings.