
Yesterday, the 3/4 fiddle I won from the Goodwill auction site arrived. It was very well packaged and came in just as good condition as the images the auction posted, so I was impressed by that.
The fiddle itself is an interesting conglomeration. While I’m no expert at violins, I know a lot more than I did when I made my first purchase. I feel like this was originally a basic quality student violin that someone made a number of modifications to try to improve.
I know that the bridge is not an original – it’s one of those adjustable feet bridges, like the one I bought a while back to try to improve my own cheap fiddle. I also feel that the tailpiece, chin rest and tuning pegs were replaced with a set very similar to something like this.
In fact, this might be the exact set that’s on here, just a slightly lighter color, or maybe faded with age:

I can see that there’s been glue repairs to where the neck attaches to the body, and the fingerboard is certainly not real ebony. I think at one time, it might have been black, but has faded with wear. Also, I can tell that the nut has been adjusted, especially the depth of the groves, probably to bring the action down to a playable level.
The strings looked suspiciously new, which made me really curious. The first thing I’d expected to need to do was replace corroded old strings. I still picked up a new set, which will arrive tomorrow, just because I want to see if I can improve the sound in any way. Because despite all these modifications, the fiddle still sounds kinda… toy-ish. I don’t have a better word for it.
Still, the sound post was in place. The tuning pegs required a bit of applier to catch and hold the tune well, and it really felt like I was breaking in new strings on this thing, because they finally did settle a bit after tuning several times.
But… what do you want for $30? The overall quality and setup of the instrument is better than the $30 Ebay VSO I bought last year. And messing around with it as I did yesterday, I learned exactly what I wanted to know.
The smaller 3/4 fiddle fits my arm and finger length far better than a full size.
I knew I was having trouble with the full size fiddle, but I thought that maybe over time, I’d work through those things. The major reason I bought this little fiddle was to see if there was enough of a difference between the sizes to warrant a smaller fiddle purchase when I decide to upgrade.
I still need to play with it a bit more, and see what it feels like for real practices. But as far as I can see, it was already much easier and more comfortable for me to handle.
So, now my curiosity lies with the 7/8 size violin. It’s a halfway between the full size and the 3/4 size, and might give me the sound I hope for with a more manageable size that makes playing comfortable.
I know that Fiddlerman offers fiddles in this size, even the Master Violin, which I dearly love the dark sound of. I have a feeling come the end of the year, I may be looking to go that direction once holiday bonuses and such come about!
It looks like you got your money’s worth, and also now know the smaller size might be better for you. I am really thinking of purchasing the Fiddlerman Master Violin, too. I just wrote them two days ago to see what it is without the “outfit”. I don’t need the case, bows, etc. For just the violin, the cost is $150 less at $728. I decided to wait at least a week before I buy it, if I do. I can be impulsive, so I want to make sure. If I have two fiddles, I can keep my finger tapes on my Concert Violin to learn a tune, and the Master without finger tapes to then practice and work on intonation without watching the tapes.
LikeLike
I also thought about asking them the price without all the extras as I already have enough bows, rosin and etc to go around. I might write them and see if they’d do that for me, too. I’ll admit that $728 is far more appealing than the cost on the site.
I also want to ask them about the sizing, because I’d like to try the 7/8 but I won’t know until I play it if that’s a good in-the-middle for me. I know they’re pretty good about working out exchanges if needed (or so I heard), but some communication up front would probably be good.
LikeLike