Why spend more than the minimum on a bowed string instrument

 
Many music shops sell new violins, including a bow and case, for around £60.  Conscientious students often spend more than this annually on string and bow hair replacement.  The ingredients that are crucial to producing a bowed string instrument that sounds good are choosing good wood ("tonewood") and shaping it to optimise its acoustic performance.  The former activity is the art of the maker and the latter is the craft.  The cheapest new instruments are made from mass cut wood, not carefully selected, are pressed or mechanically routed into shape, given a coat of lacquer or varnish which does nothing to help the vibration and marketed on the footing that they will be discarded after quite a short life.  During their lives, most of them will sound indifferent at best, and often appalling, as neither of the crucial ingredients is present.

Any well-made instrument of the violin family has the capacity to last for centuries, if well looked after.  Top performers often use very valuable Italian instruments around three hundred years old, which are considered to produce the best sound.

It is unnecessary to spend an enormous amount of money to buy a violin that sounds good.  Until the spread of the wireless and the gramophone, plenty of violins were made or hand finished by competent craftspeople to satisfy a demand for live music.  Well proportioned examples of these which have survived without much damage or warping can generally be got into excellent playing condition with a limited amount of expert attention, mainly because the time consuming work of shaping the plates of the sound box to the correct thicknesses at front and back retains its usefulness.  Such violins, restored to order, sound enormously better than new, cheap instruments, an important consideration both to motivate players and to minimise the unpleasant aspects of practising for family members who have to hear it.

The stock to be found here concentrates on the needs of those who want instruments of quality and character and which offer exceptional value for money.