Rescue Violins: The Violin Rescue Centre

  The antique French "Compagnon" violin all finished last night. It sounds incredible. This full size violin has a clear, bright and ringing voice. I am very pleased with it. Made around 1920 by the renowned Mirecourt factory (workshop) Jérôme Thibouville-Lamy. I fitted this fine violin with German Wittner geared pegs and a super comfy Wittner anti-allergenic chin rest. These geared pegs dispense with the need for fine tuners on the tailpiece, protect the pegbox from wear and allow a longer after string (behind the bridge) length. That reduces tension on the bridge, allowing it to flex ever so slightly under playing, which creates the opportunity for a more flexible tone approach by experienced players. The bridge is a very special professional quality French model, which I cut from a blank to fit and then tuned very carefully to the violin to open the sound without losing string focus and to create just a little extra resonance and ring. The e-string is set at 3mm from the

This is one on my free of charge repair list for Nottingham Music Hub today. The patient is an instrument owned by a pupil. They dropped it and the table (face) cracked from the saddle right up to the f-hole. It is a 14 inch viola, which means it is the same length as a full size( 4/4) violin.  This size of viola is most usually a children's size. That said,a 14 inch viola is also commonly employed for  violinists learning to play viola. The sound post was clearly extremely badly fitted - at an angle and not at all in the right location on the treble side of the bridge foot.   Badly fitted sound post. Not perfectly vertical. The cross on the image below shows where the sound post was located. The a large dot where it should be located.  Sound post badly located. Too far in. Moreover, when examined the "sound post" looks like it was some bit of left over scrap wood stick picked up off the ground with no regard to the fact a squirrel, mouse or chinchilla had been gnawing on