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

When not editing the Internet Journal of criminology and writing books on science fraud, I repair  violins and cellos for Nottingham Music Hub. Other violins I repair and donate some to self-employed music teachers. I don't charge anything for this work. Nottingham Music Hub is a charitable music organisation. Here are some of this week's patients, a mix of  3/4 size Stentor student violins, one needed the fingerboard re-gluing, the other had pegbox cracked in two, a 1/4 size cello with he bottom half coming unglued and an old 3/4 size Lark violin that needed a sound post crack fixing, the bottom re-gluing at the seam and a new sound post. All need re-touching with the right shade of spirit varnish varnish.  All repaired with traditional hot hide glue.  1/4 Size Stentor Cello - re-glued an open seam. Re-attaching a fingerboard to a 3/4 size Stentor violin Lark - Emerging sound post crack glued on the outside and then clamped Gluing the bottom plate before removing the top (tabl

 This JTL violin will sound lovely when finished. I am currently about to glue an open seam on the bottom. It is going to get a set of geared Witner pegs and a very good bridge. Pirasto Tonica strings will compliment it. And I have a great vintage chinrest I'm going to give it. I am thinking this one is going to become my violin for a while. I'll see how rich and colourful it sounds when done. My ultra fine blade shows the open seam in need of hot hide gluing and clamping. Compagnon hot hide glued and clamped Unfortunately, in its past, some window-licking bozo thought it a good idea to scratch their initials on the back of the scroll of this lovely old violin. So this will have to be very diligently sorted out.  Compagnon corner repair. Initial wood bonded. Corner Repair. Initial wood bonded.

What I never first realised as I initially set about fixing it is that this instrument is probably a genuine baroque violin (probably 18th century); the fingerboard being a fair bit shorter and the back being noticeably flatter and other proportions different to a Strad model.  The purfling on the violin is simply drawn on and would have been done using a goose quill and ink. At some point in time - a long time ago by the looks of it - an expert luthier added a small wedge under the fingerboard, which was likely done in the C19th to elevate the fingerboards of older baroque violins to be closer to the steeper angle of  a Stradivari model. But the neck is genuine and there is no graft. The steeper angle increases the tension of the strings across the bridge and so make the instrument louder. Usually when this was done a longer Stradivarius fingerboard was added. But not in the case of this particular violin. A very long time ago a small wedge was expertly fitted to the neck, to elevate