It is a crazily busy season for me and my instruments... we (and my wife) have been running hard on fumes for quite a while... and last week, I had a brief couple of days off (my wife is having an evening off tonight before it all starts up again...), downtime to take care of the garden... but more importantly, some little pitstop maintenance for my instruments.
As you can see, the bridge (holding the strings up)... is a little crooked on this instrument (look at the notches on the f-holes on each side for reference). This is my "higher" pitched violin, I had actually done a concert on this violin in the previous week... and I was wondering why I was struggling so much with it.
Over time, the strings can pull unevenly at the bridge (with different tensions and also with different pulls when you tune the instrument... it doesn't help that this is strung with a mix of naked gut and metal strings, with different type of grip and friction (a bit of graphite helps... but doesn't negate it completely).
Anyway, that usually means that the top of the bridge gets curled a bit... and I'm happy just fixing that myself.... but when the feet move, well... that is definitely something that I prefer to leave to the luthier to fix. And so I dropped by and he fixed it up in the half hour that I had... and he showed me how to do it for future as well... but I'm not sure that I'm brave enough for that!
... and one of my violas was recently in the luthier's workshop to rejoin a seal where the endpin block was... apparently that had delaminated from the block, and all the strings had to be taken off to take out the endpin and then fix the block join. He did spare me the gory details... but he did mention that the sound post also had twisted and needed to be reseated as well.
Anyway, when I started practicing on it again... it was ringing weirdly false... and that normally means that the strings are dull and old. It didn't help that the strings had all their tension removed and then ramped up again...
So, a complete restring was on the cards...
... and some of the lower bass strings were weirdly long... not quite double lengths, so they needed to be cut down to size.. a bit annoying, and it did make for a bit of a hard stringing for one of them as it started fray instead of going easily into the small hole in the peg.
But thankfully, it was sounding good when it was completely restrung... a little sluggish on the bass end compared to previously, but that was because I used a heavier gauge this time as an experiment... probably shouldn't do that a week before a large concert, but hey... when else was I going to do that!
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In as much as I cannot fix everything, I love to fix the things that I personally use. Especially, things like this musical instruments.
Thank goodness you were able to fix.
Cheers 🍻
Very interesting! I apologize if I have missed it in the past, but have you ever posted any videos of you or your wife playing? I'd love to take a listen when I get some time.
Really enjoyed reading this, Bengy. I can relate — sometimes it feels like the instruments have their own moods, right? Glad you got them back in shape before the concert.
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There used to be an instrument repair shop/luthier opposite where I lived when I was a teen. The guy who owned it, Archie McPherson was a pretty well known in his field but he didn't just do classical instruments he would do electric guitars and basses too. The guy had one eye that pointed the wrong way and if you ever wandered in his shop he would talk to you for hours. It would be hard to escape.
Being not the richest kid I would often dumptser dive in the nicer parts of London to see what I could find. One time behind the Marquee, which when it was alive was a pretty famous music venue, I found the remains of a Fender Stratocaster that someone had obviously smashed onstage. The neck was broken off the body with a piece sheered out of it around the backplate and splitting the fretboard. It had also been hollowed out and had a metal plate attached to the back - a mess. I took it into the repair shop and asked how much it would be to fix it. He waved me away. Because I was a kid, lived opposite and knew me reasonably well he only charged me for the parts and nothing for the labour and boy oh boy what a job he had done. The break in the neck was close to invisible which was amazing seeing as he had to find a piece of wood to match the bit that was missing. I played like a gem too. Everyone who picked it up was shocked by how easy it was to play. It's a beautiful beat up guitar which I still own ....and play very badly. :D