Violin Making and Maintenance

Violin Making And Maintenance

Making an instrument of the violin family may be done in different ways, many of which have changed very little in nearly 500 years since the first violins were made. Some violins, called "bench-made" instruments, are made by a single individual, either a master maker, or an amateur working alone. Several people may participate in the making of a "shop-made" instrument, working under the supervision of a master. Various levels of "trade violin" exist, often mass-produced by workers who each focus on a small part of the overall job, with or without the aid of machinery.

"Setting up" a violin is generally considered to be a separate activity, and may be done many times over the lengthy service life of the instrument. Setup includes fitting and trimming tuning pegs, surfacing the fingerboard, carving the soundpost and bridge, adjusting the string spacing and action height, and other tasks related to putting the finished instrument into playing condition and optimizing its voice and response.

Violin maintenance goes on as long as the instrument is to be kept in playing condition, and includes tasks such as replacing strings, positioning the soundpost and bridge, lubricating pegs and fine tuners, resurfacing the fingerboard, attending to the instrument's finish, and restoring or replacing parts of the violin or its accessories which have suffered wear or damage.

Read more about Violin Making And Maintenance:  Making Violins, Maintenance, Sound Post Adjustment

Famous quotes containing the words violin, making and/or maintenance:

    To regard one’s immortality as an exchange of matter is as strange as predicting the future of a violin case once the expensive violin it held has broken and lost its worth.
    Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)

    Especially with our first child, we tend to take too much responsibility—both credit and blame—for everything. The more we want to be good parents, the more we tend to see ourselves as making or breaking our children.
    Polly Berrien Berends (20th century)

    ... in the fierce competition of modern society the only class left in the country possessing leisure is that of women supported in easy circumstances by husband or father, and it is to this class we must look for the maintenance of cultivated and refined tastes, for that value and pursuit of knowledge and of art for their own sakes which can alone save society from degenerating into a huge machine for making money, and gratifying the love of sensual luxury.
    Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)