Daily Archives: September 18, 2023

Last week was the week of bow rehairs, it turns out! 5 out of 6 of the bows I worked on. (They also required a good selection of other maintenance jobs, including three new eyelets, a new tip plate and a new lapping and thumb leather.)

The owner of this violin brought it in for a general setup check. It turned out that somehow the bridge had been moved forwards over the years, so the string length was almost a centimetre shorter than the instrument was built for and the strings were much too high off the fingerboard. Unfortunately the soundpost, whilst badly fitting had been pushed too tight at some point, resulting in the top becoming distorted. I replaced that as well as fitting new strings.

This violin came in for an emergency crack repair. For the best prognosis, the top usually needs to be taken off the top of the instrument to get proper access to clean, clamp and internally reinforce the repair. However this increases the scope of the job significantly, so in this case we’ve decided to go with an external glue-up and see if it holds. I also modified the fit of the pegs, as they weren’t at all easy to tune, and added a parchment patch to the bridge for the E string.

This 1980s viola needed a new soundpost because the old one kept falling over. It also required some peg adjustment. (The next time the pegs needs adjusting, they’ll probably need replacing, as they have almost run out of useable length.)