After the surprising success in restoring my aunt's ancient violin last November, I started to think I'd like to do a little light lutherie more often, so I'm now doing my own repairs and looking out for instruments that need saving. Last week I had a tiny little repair job when the tailgut broke on the old violin. It broke near one end, so I just tied up the new end with the old string, did a bit of flame melting and that was it. When I shared this on facebook, a musical friend commented approvingly on "piracy in lutherie", so here I have my new tag for these endeavours, pirate luthier.
This week I rehaired Heinrich's old cello bow. It had been done professionally in 2009, when the young cellist started playing the full-sized instrument. As they always used a different bow, the 2/3 of hair missing now from Heinrich's bow are all my work (playing almost daily for the last six years, and up to an hour per day during the Plague Year Bach Project). The rehairing went ok - it's not looking quite as neat as a bow set up professionally, but it works perfectly fine and will serve me a few years I'm sure.
This week I also picked up a stray violin in need of repair from a folkie friend who is leaving the country. Its soundpost had come off and it was missing the E-string. Fortunately, the soundpost had a wedge-shaped hole on the side facing the F-hole, so rather than fiddling with the gripping mechanism I concocted the last time, I could wedge the sharp end of my bent wire into that hole and just pull it out once the post was in place. That worked better and quicker than the last time. Within 20 minutes I had the soundpost where I wanted it.
Here's a photo of the setup showing the helpful hole:
Looking at that photo now, I may want to experiment with moving the bridge a little bit closer to the soundpost. Easier than moving the soundpost closer to the bridge. Buchanan's book says it should be closer for "well-arched models" and further away for flatter fiddles, but I'm not sure where this one stands in terms of archedness.
It is a cheap violin that doesn't sound very good (Paragon, made in China, I believe), but to my ear it is a bit better than the Stentor "Andreas Zeller" we had since 2015 (and actually paid money for, at the antiques fair in Gloucester Green), although not as good as the old family fiddle which I am now playing regularly. So here's the trio of them in ranking order:
All three are now ready to play, so I might do a comparison video one day.
I also have another Stentor fiddle (a Student I found ridiculously cheap on gumtree), which I'm plundering for accessories and spares. On that one, the peg of the A-string is slipping and I have so far failed to make it stick. - Update: looking at it again after writing this, I realised that the reason is a crack in the scroll going all the way from the peghole to the top of the scroll, on the side of the peg handle. Silly and trivial, but maybe not worth fixing? Especially as the sound (tested just now with the A string attached to the E peg) is clearly the worst of all four fiddles. I guess I'll just continue using this one as a quarry for whatever parts I may need ...
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