Pirate luthier adventures continued:
Violin number 24 has arrived! After 14 years of writing 24 features per calendar year for Current Biology, I've come to associate this number with happiness and a sense of achievement, so this is a milestone I am celebrating - and also an old violin worth blogging about.
I found it lying on a chair in an Oxfam shop (in the Oxfam shop, actually, the first one ever), looking as battered as the surface of the Moon and a bit dishevelled but fundamentally sound. No case, no chinrest, but three strings and an interesting looking old bow. Some of its many impact craters:
I'm wondering if somebody repeatedly dug the tip of their bow in there. Also not sure what happened on the other side of the fingerboard:
It's a bit frustrating to have an old instrument with absolutely no info on its provenance (no label or mark whatsoever), but based on the number of scratches I would guess it must be more than 50 years old. It also looks and sounds like an early 20th century European violin to my very limited experience. It also makes the name finding harder. Might have to start a series with eg female composers' names.
It came with three Dominant strings (GDA), so I fitted it out with a random E string I had and tuned it up to Baroque pitch to start playing gently. So here it is with my provisional set-up:
Within a week I coaxed it up to concert pitch (A=440) so it is now ready to play as normal. Will take it to the next session that comes up (which is actually today as it happens).
Update 17.3. Putting it in a case for the first time to take it to the session, I realised the body is a couple of millimetres longer than a standard violin. It only just fits into a standard (Stentor) case, squeezing the polystyrene a bit.
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 the first week of June.
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 the first week of June.
violin 8) is the "ladies violin", a 7/8 skylark. It was one of the six violins I gave away on freegle in the first week of June.
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 the first week of June.
violin 10) is the broken one with traces of multiple repair attempts. I'm still gathering courage to try and fix that one.
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 the first week of June.
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 the first week of June.
violins 13) through to 15) I bought locally through gumtree or facebook, nothing special to report.
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 described above.
Balance 10.3.2025: Of the 24 violins listed above, 7 received via freegle, 3 from friends and family, 13 bought (gumtree, facebook, charity shops, cost ranging £ 10 to £45), 1 taken in for repair only and returned to its family.
Of the 23 acquired, 6 given away via freegle, 2 given to a local school, 2 sold to musical friends, 1 moved to Germany for holiday practice, 8 currently in house and ready to play, 4 in house and still broken.
List of non-violins 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.
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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