After a busy couple of months, it was lovely to finish off this year in the workshop with a visit from Austrian luthier Robin Szombath 
A pleasant afternoon drinking coffee and discussing varnish to help banish the winter gloom.
Yearly Archives: 2022
30 posts
Just finished putting a replacement bridge on the house bass at Cafe#9, Sheffield. The original bridge was warped and so it was definitely time to retire it.
Violin in for a replacement tailpiece and chinrest and a string change. The old tailpiece had 4 external fine tuners, which are not only bad for the tone but in this case were also chewing up the ends of the strings leading to difficulty changing strings and premature breakage. With hardware like that’s, its no wonder so many player are afraid on changing their own strings!
Bass in for a neck-root repair and new soundpost (usually wise when the old one falls over as soon as string tension is removed!)
This cello came in for a new bridge. It had also at some point been subjected to the tender mercies of young children, and somehow ended up with a gold chain getting dropped inside it!
I managed to spend a bit of time this afternoon on my two newest instruments, one very nearly complete and the other in the process of rough carving. It makes a real change of pace from setup and repair jobs. I love the setup work with its combination of precision and relatively quick results, but there’s nothing quite like making big heaps of wood shavings and turning chunks chunks of timber into new musical instruments.
Cello and bow came in for a service last week. The original soundpost had reached the limits of its adjustment so it was high time for a new one, as well as some string height adjustments and general setup tweaks.The bow, meanwhile, needed some tweaks to the screw mechanism and a new thumb leather as well as a rehair.
Just finished a large restoration on this violin. The instrument had suffered serious damage at some point (and possibly a few bad repairs), and so the neck angle was wrong despite attempts to correct it with an oversized wedge.
The repair ended up involving partial disassembly of the violin in order to correct the angles, followed by replacing the old fingerboard which was too thin and flexible, and planing down the old wedge. There were also peg hole bushings required due to the size the old holes had worn to and new pegs, bridge, soundpost, endpin and tailpiece in order to make the instrument play and sound to its full potential.
Lovely contemporary Australian cello in for some setup tweaks. It was also a real treat to flip it over and see the amazing choice of wood for the back.