Monthly Archives: November 2022

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.

Bass in this morning for some bridge adjustments. The bridge was leaning over due to badly fitting feet. Luckily I was able to sort it out quickly much to the owner’s relief (and mine, because basses take up a lot of workshop space!)

The owner of this viola had a nasty shock when her bridge fell over during a rehearsal! Luckily this is usually a fairly easy issue to rectify, however in this case it turned out that the bridge has suffered long-term warping, so although it could be stood up, it would be prone to fall again. The soundpost also fell over once string tension was removed, which is a good indication that a new, better fitting post was sorely needed along with a new bridge.

Just finished a setup on this nice little tenor guitar. Originally shipped in CGDA tuning, it had been restrung for GDAE tuning but not appropriately adjusted for correct intonation. On these mid-range instruments, it’s often those fine setup details where corners are cut, but if you can pick one up for a decent price then it’s well worth bringing it to a luthier to find out what can be optimised.

Restoration on this violin is finished. A neck reset was seriously required as the fingerboard was actually touching the top! Then a new soundpost and bridge to account for the altered string angle, as well as a full sized tailpiece in order to achieve the correct afterlength (for some reason it was fitted with a 3/4 size one.)