Pirate Luthier update
After a month without new arrivals, I found two violins to rescue at the antiques fair on Gloucester Green on the same day, within five minutes in fact. The first one, number 28 in my books, is a cool shiny black. It isn't branded at all, but looking online I see companies like Gear4music selling similar ones in black or other colours.
As I found it (and bought it for £25) it looked completely new, just had a couple of dents in the fingerboard and in the outside of the case, probably due to inadequate storage or transport arrangements. I would suggest that it has never been played, because it wasn't playable and hadn't been set up properly. The bridge was almost raw, so I had to cut that to the right shape and size. Then the pegs were all sticking to an extent that made tuning impossible. Once I fixed that with peg paste, they slid deeper into the holes meaning that in two pegs the holes for the strings disappeared in the sides of the scroll because they were clearly in the wrong places. So I had a couple of extra holes to drill and then everything worked ok.
After setting everything up, I was left with one problem that I can't fix: The fingerboard is slightly out of kilter with the straight line from the scroll to the tailpin. Once the strings are tuned up, the physics of the considerable pull forces doesn't lie - it chooses the shortest path, and that isn't quite where the fingerboard is attached. While this misalignment could in theory be due to the tailpin being in the wrong place, I checked by pressing a ruler to the sides of the fingerboard to extrapolate its direction. It is a good 5 mm off (to the E side) with respect to the F-holes. So the instrument looks a bit lop-sided but it is playable now. I'd even say it sounds quite nice for a cheap factory fiddle with obvious manufacturing flaws. Nice and warm sound in the lower register, nothing boxy about it. So whatever is hidden under the black paint, it isn't a cigar box.
Oh, and we have a new rug ...
List of violins in the pirate luthier series:
violin 1) is the one my late aunt had since the 1930s, which got me started. After restoring it in November 2022, I played it almost every day for 14 months, until number 5) showed up.
violin 2) is a Stentor student 1 (a very widely used brand of cheap fiddles available everywhere and still being produced). I bought it very cheap on gumtree, mainly because I needed a case for number 1). It has a fault that is probably not worth repairing, see the blog entry on number 3) below. After stripping it of some accessories and spares, I am now inclined to keep it in a semi-functional state to try out experimental repairs, i.e. use it as a wooden guinea pig of sorts.
violin 3) came from a folkie friend who moved away. I put the soundpost back in its place and it has now found a new home.
violin 4) is a modern Chinese one which I bought from one musical friend and sold to another, no work needed.
violin 5) (donated by a friendly freegler) was my second favourite and the one I played in folk sessions for roughly a year until number 22) showed up.
violin 6) is the half-sized Lark which was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.
violin 7) is a skylark from 1991 which I bought on gumtree for £ 10 and fitted with a new bridge. Good enough for folk I would say. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.
violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.
violin 9) is the one which needed a new bridge and a tailgut and turned out to sound quite lovely on the E string. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.
violin 10) is the 3/4 sized one with a broken neck and traces of multiple repair attempts, which I've now repaired. I kept it for a couple of months to check the neck stays in place, then gave it away to a good cause in June 2025.
violin 11) is the 3/4 sold by JP Guivier & Co Ltd. in the 1950s but may actually be older than that. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.
violin 12) is a full-size Lark which a freegle user kindly donated and delivered after seeing my offer. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in June 2024.
violin 13) is still broken
violin 14) is a half-size Lark which I gave away to a good cause in June 2025.
violin 15) is a 3/4 size Stentor student 2, which I gave away to a local school in October 2024
violin 16) is the Sebastian Klotz branded one, sadly not made by the Mittenwald luthier, but by Yamaha Malaysia, who appear to have trademarked his name.
violin 17) is the supersized violin with a very strong sound.
violin 18) is the slightly drunken but nice sounding violin from Poland, which I restored and returned to its family.
violin 19) is a Stentor student 1 violin which only needed a little TLC, and within less than a week I had it brushed up and ready to move to our local school. The most intriguing problem it had was that somebody had put in the bridge the wrong way round, with the lower slope under the G string.
violin 20) is a Stentor student 1 violin I bought via GumTree. It sounds really nice for what it is, thanks in part to a good set-up with Dominant strings. My current plan is to make this one an official Cowley Orchestra instrument.
violin 21) is a nameless student violin I bought via facebook, not quite sure what to think of it. The fingerboard is horizontal, which is all wrong and may mean there is not enough pressure on the bridge to produce a good sound.
violin 22) is the 19th century Guarneri copy, still my favourite (although I'll have to fix that crack at some point).
violin 23) is a nameless student violin I bought from a charity shop. It looks unused but had no strings, so I set it up with a set of spare strings that came with another violin. It turned out to be no trouble at all and sounds ok for an instrument that looks really cheap (with the purfling painted on).
violin 24) is the densely cratered one I found lying on a chair at Oxfam, and which I currently play at sessions.
violin 25) is the fleamarket find from Neuss
violin 26) is the lady in red, which has now rejoined its family.
violin 27) is the Czechoslovakian student model
violin 28) is the black one described above
violin 29) is an interesting old 7/8 size instrument which I'll feature in the next entry.
Balance 13.9.2025:
Of the 29 violins listed above, 8 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 16 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, flea markets, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 2 taken in for repair only and returned to their families.
Of the 27 acquired, 8 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 11 currently in house and ready to play, 1 in house and just needs setting up, 2 in house and still broken.
List of other instruments in the pirate luthier series:
guitar 1) is the 100 year-old one from Valencia which I set up with frets and strings and handed back to its owner.
guitar 2) is one I spotted in a charity shop "sold as seen" for a very affordable price with nothing more than a broken string, and I bought and repaired it because I knew the owner of the next one needed one while their guitar was out of service.
guitar 3) had a broken neck which I glued back on with hide glue at the same time when I repaired violin 10). It has now returned to its family.
the zither I found at the flea market in Dusseldorf.
and finally a shout-out to our family-built hammered dulcimer, which dates from 2016, long before I got any ideas about violins.
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