All About Choosing and Buying Violins

[sautille]

sleepyqueen:

It is necessary to have 4 fine tuners on a beginners violin?

How old is the beginner? To be able to tune with pegs only (except E-string), one needs to have sufficiently strong arms & fingers. My son could not effectively do peg tuning until he was around 12-13 yo.

[bktan02]

Anyone know where to get second hand student model violin? My son is using size 1/10. Thanks!

[sleepyqueen]

sautille:

sleepyqueen:

It is necessary to have 4 fine tuners on a beginners violin?

How old is the beginner? To be able to tune with pegs only (except E-string), one needs to have sufficiently strong arms & fingers. My son could not effectively do peg tuning until he was around 12-13 yo.

Mine son is 9 years old. Just started violin for 2 lessons. I asked before the teacher mentioned will ease his learning. But what I saw on the market most violin does not have the fine tuner.

Also how can we smoothen the pegs? Currently the pegs in the new violin are quite tight.

[dasalo]

sleepyqueen:

Mine son is 9 years old. Just started violin for 2 lessons. I asked before the teacher mentioned will ease his learning. But what I saw on the market most violin does not have the fine tuner.


Also how can we smoothen the pegs? Currently the pegs in the new violin are quite tight.

It is encouraged for young beginners to have fine tuners as that helps them to fine tune the strings to correct pitch on their own. The fine tuners aren't expensive anyway.

To smoothen the pegs, you can either bring it back to the seller to have them corrected or if it is not overly tight, just use pencil lead to rub on the contact point. There are peg chalks too but don't know if they are easily available. You may want to try at synwin.

[atping]

Hi Luckystar


I’ve pm-ed you too. Thanks!

[meiah]

Went to Synwin today. Wanted to pop by Gramercy too but looking at my ds face, I gave up. Anyway, I must say that their service is quite good. My ds was so reluctant to test the violins that the staff there played for him to listen and pick! Can play for for sch orchestra but don’t want to play a few strings in the shop! Now happily testing it at home!!

[phankao]

meiah:

Went to Synwin today. Wanted to pop by Gramercy too but looking at my ds face, I gave up. Anyway, I must say that their service is quite good. My ds was so reluctant to test the violins that the staff there played for him to listen and pick! Can play for for sch orchestra but don't want to play a few strings in the shop! Now happily testing it at home!!

haha - my son also didn't really like to try out when I brought him to buy full-size violin, but he did, lah. We weren't impressed by the tones of the violins in the end and tried out violin at Music Essentials. The tone quality of same priced violin is quite significant. The ones at music essentials sounded much better. That quite sealed the deal bc my son didn't like to go \"shopping\" and was happy to go home with new violin. We already made 2 trips just for that. Worse yet, we made some 3 or 4 trips for various issues for his viola. So he was quite sick of it.

[meiah]

At least your ds made 2 trips. Mine was supposed to visit two shops in one day. Long overdue to get a 4/4. At the first shop, he was already a sour-face when asked to test. Picked up 2 and lightly produced a few scratchy sounds. Ignored the 3rd one. Told him we’ll just get him the $100 china-made ones since he had no opinion and he said fine! Good grief! And just 4 hours earlier, he said he did not want china-made ones!


Well, yeah, mine was really happy to pick up the case and leave the shop after we paid for it.

[phankao]

meiah:

At least your ds made 2 trips. Mine was supposed to visit two shops in one day. Long overdue to get a 4/4. At the first shop, he was already a sour-face when asked to test. Picked up 2 and lightly produced a few scratchy sounds. Ignored the 3rd one. Told him we'll just get him the $100 china-made ones since he had no opinion and he said fine! Good grief! And just 4 hours earlier, he said he did not want china-made ones!


Well, yeah, mine was really happy to pick up the case and leave the shop after we paid for it.

Er, no lah. 1st time went to synwin, not totally satisfied with the sound quality of the violins he tried. Not to expectation at all. Then thought of trying some vintage violins either at Tanglewood. And Tong MingXi nearby. But in the end, then 2nd trip we went to Music Essentials and settled with that lah. Afterall, now his main instrument is viola and not violin. His teacher only gave the go-ahead to buy full-size beginning of this year. *hehe* and my son is older than yours.

[meiah]

Sigh… I would be quite happy if my ds can say he is not happy with any of the instruments. Instead, just because he didn’t like to shop and test, he simply said anything is better than his 3/4! So a 4/4 is already an improvement to him!!! Really wanted to strangle him in the shop. Since he settled for one in the end, didn’t want to make him go to another shop because I know that he would grumble and I would hear no end of it!