Can we buy the instrument we’re renting?
Yes, and you can do it whenever you like rather than waiting for the rental to end. Everything we rent is available to buy, at every label, and what you have already paid in rental fees comes off the price.…
Viola
Viola questions, answered by our string team. Violas are measured in inches rather than fractions, which confuses nearly everyone the first time — there’s no standard “full size,” so a 15″ and a 16″ are both adult instruments that simply sound different. We also field a lot of questions from families whose violinist has been asked to switch, usually because the school orchestra is short of violists. The good news is that most of what they know transfers.
Why did my instrument arrive out of tune?
Because it is a string instrument, and that is what they do. We tune every instrument before it leaves the shop, but strings stretch and settle, wood moves with temperature and humidity, and the instrument travels. By the time it…
Can we move up to a better instrument partway through the year?
Yes, and there is no penalty for it. There is a change of instrument form for exactly this. You pay the difference in the monthly rate for the months remaining in your rental, the insurance is recalculated for the new…
My child’s teacher is skeptical of an instrument with no brand name on it.
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…
Are the violins sold online for under a hundred dollars any good?
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…
What does “set up by a luthier” actually involve?
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…
Why does one violin cost three times another?
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,…
Can we swap to a bigger size as our child grows?
Yes, at no charge, as many times as growing requires, and it is one of the main reasons to rent a string instrument rather than buy one. Most students move up a size every eighteen months to two years through…
The director wants my violinist to switch to viola. Is that starting over?
No, and it happens so often it is practically a tradition: most of what your child knows transfers directly, and the genuinely new work is a few weeks of alto clef. School orchestras are chronically short of violists, so somewhere…
Why are violas measured in inches instead of fractions?
Because there is no standard “full size” viola. Violins scale up to a fixed 4/4 and stop. Violas are built in a continuous range of body lengths, and a 15″ and a 16″ are both adult instruments. They simply sound…