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This cello came in because the owner wasn’t really satisfied with the tone and projection. She also struggled to tune it with the pegs, which were a form of early metal peg but without any mechanical functionality, and much harder to operate than regular wooden pegs would have been. The endpin also slipped quite easily.

When I examined the cello I found that the bridge was simply not the right width for the internal components of the instrument leading to the bass bar and soundpost being unable to do their job properly. I replaced the bridge as well as fitting a steel tailpiece cable to help clarify the sound. I also fitted a set of much more effective modern geared pegs and a new end pin.

The front of the cello had also got quite grimey and needed a good clean and polish.

This violin came into the workshop because the owner felt like the tone had got worse recently. The soundpost wasn’t a great fit, and the bridge had been glued together. The pegs were also very slippy… And this is the state in which it was sold to the owner!

I fitted a new bridge, soundpost, strings and pegs which made a big difference.

This violin wandered into the workshop because the bridge has fallen over. I put the bridge upright, but the owner was also concerned that the tone on the E string was rather twangy. It turned out that the soundpost was very far out of position and too tight. I also replaced the tailpiece with one which sports built in fine-tuners.

This violin came into the workshop because the owner had noticed the tone becoming gradually more fuzzy over years. I could tell straight away that the soundpost needed replacing- it turned out that the instrument had never had a new soundpost fitted since it was made! I also treated it to new strings.

This violin came into the workshop for a new bridge because the old one was very warped. It’s always interesting to look inside violins whilst the strings are off – although it’s tidy on the outside, the inside of this violin looks like it came straight from the carving gouge without any refinement.

This violin still had on its original bridge from the 1980s, which had definitely come to the end of its useful life. If the process of preparing to fit a new bridge, I observed that the elevation of the violin had dropped a bit, meaning that I would have had to fit an unusually low bridge in order to achieve a good string height. However there were also some lumps and bumps in the fingerboard, so I realised that I would be able to correct the elevation with a slightly angled fingerboard reshoot before going on to fit the new bridge at the standard dimensions.

This violin came in primary for a couple of cracks on the top to be repaired, however the owner had also observed that the E string was a bit bright so I ended up fitting a new soundpost as well as trying a different brand of E string. The bridge also benefited from a little adjustment.

This cello came in for some general improvements. It’s not a very expensive and fancy instrument, but nontheless I believe most instruments can be improved at least somewhat from factory setup. This cello got some bridge adjustments and a new soundpost as well as a fresh set of good quality strings and some optimisation of the peg fit.

This violin needed a new bridge as the old one had snapped.

This violin had had been restored at some point but all of the angles were slightly askew, leading to the neck pointing sideways from the centre line and the fingerboard pointing away from the bridge. I’d done some conservative corrections on it before, but the owner decided he wanted to try get the neck skew corrected as well. An interesting challenge to do without disturbing the old repairs around that area.