How our instruments are made, what setup involves, and what actually separates one label or line from another. Setup is the part nobody thinks about and the part that decides whether an instrument is a pleasure or a fight: the bridge fitted to that one instrument, the sound post placed by feel, the string height set for a child’s hand. Every instrument we rent goes across our bench in Norwalk before it leaves, whatever it costs to rent.
It depends on the line. A Line instruments are brand new, and they arrive with everything new, mouthpiece included. B Line and C Line instruments have been played before. Each of those is stripped down and restored on our bench,…
It is a different cello, built for different conditions, and for a student in the first years it is often the better one to have. Laminated means several thin sheets of wood glued together rather than one solid piece carved…
That is a reasonable instinct, and we would rather a teacher raised it than said nothing. Instruments do turn up in school music rooms that arrived from an online seller and cannot be played properly, and a teacher who has…
No, and the reason is worth understanding before you spend the money. We hold every instrument to four requirements before we will stock it: it has to sound like a violin, play like a violin, look like a violin, and…
Setup is the hand work done to a string instrument after it is built and before anyone plays it. The bridge is carved and fitted to that individual instrument, the sound post is positioned inside the body, the string height…
The wood is the same. A White Label violin and a Black Label violin are both spruce, maple and ebony, and there is no cheaper species in the less expensive one. What you pay more for is the maker’s time,…
Band instruments do: a heavily played student horn typically wants replacing after three to five years, though with regular service ours stay in the fleet ten years and play well. String instruments don’t: a properly kept violin or cello lasts…
Every returning instrument goes through the same two-station process, and no instrument skips it: a full cleaning and sanitizing first, brass bathed in the dip tanks and every mouthpiece sanitized, then a separate checker who actually plays it, every key,…
A lot of people just call us the violin doctor, and that is exactly what a luthier is: someone trained to build, repair, and care for string instruments. The word is reserved for strings. You would not call a piano…