How to Choose a Good Violin
WOOD – All violins and made of wood, with the exception of electric violins. Thus wood is a major factor which affects the sound produced. The first thing to look for is whether the wood comes from a fast growing tree or slow growing. This can often be discerned by the wood rings on the violin. If the wood rings are close together, it is from a slow growing tree and thus more valuable. Sometimes, it is not amazing to get hundreds of years old wood being use to make a good violin. This is true for both the spruce front and the maple back, sides and scroll.
VARNISH – Good violins are usually hand varnished. Second grade violins can spray varnished. Hand varnishing is longer lasting and thus better able to protect the violin, also hand varnishing also the violin to resonant better producing better sound. To tell the difference, the varnish on hand varnished violins is very deep looking compared to a sprayed one. It becomes very apparent when you put the 2 together.
VIOLIN BACK – Good violins usually have one piece back, since less seams on a violin is more desirable. And one piece back are usually more expensive since one have to look for a tree which is large enough. But having a 2 piece back is not necessary a bad thing, just that a one piece back violin is more expensive.
FLAMINGS – Flamed wood looks like it has tiger stripes. So it one look at the sides and the back to a good violin, one should see 3 dimensional stripes, and as one changes the angle of looking at it, the stripes changes also.
FINGER BOARD – The best wood/material for the finger board can only be Indian Ebony, and it has a colour of being solid black to black with a hint of dark brown.
TAIL – It also should be made of ebony.
PEGS – Should be made of ebony, sandalwood, boxwood, or mahogany.
Also when buying second hand violin these are the thing you should look out for.
Make sure the sound post is not rolling around in the instrument, if it hasn’t been played in a while. Look and make sure there are no cracks in the wood. Knock around the side of the instrument to see if there are cracks in the glue. Violins with cracked glue should sound differently from parts with glue that has not been cracked. Also check on the violin if the any rosin dust have fused with the varnish, this happens because collected rosin dust has not been wiped and was left long enough on the varnish. This will affect the beauty of the violin and will become impossible to remove without damage.
