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Chapter 6. Repairs and Adjustments of Violins and Bows

I urge you to read this chapter before you buy a violin or bow. Regardless of the reason for your purchase -- and regardless of the price range you're thinking of -- remember the following four points:

1. From the moment of purchase, any violin or bow needs repairs and adjustments. Each demands some degree of maintenance -- for the structure of violins and bows is sensitive and fragile. Even if the violin or bow has never been involved in an accident, the effect of humidity levels (it's been too dry, it's been too wet) -- along with the "wear and tear" that are part of normal usage -- will require a repairman's services.

2. People obviously buy instruments for many reasons: tone value, utilitarian value, artistic value, and so on. But maintenance of that value depends upon the availability of repair services -- and upon the professional competence and ethical integrity of any given repairman.

3. Few people buy a car, a VCR or TV, or a washing machine from someone who offers no repair services. Yet, oddly enough, there are many who buy stringed instruments -- often far more expensive than any of the commercial items just listed -- without asking about maintenance services. This is clearly linked to my second point -- and is clearly puzzling.

4. Repair and adjustment prices vary greatly for identical repairs. When they're the prices of a shop using Sales Method #1, they're usually pitched "as high as the traffic will bear." But when repairs are done by an independent professional violin maker, their cost is set by a basic price schedule.

A. AVAILABILITY OF REPAIR AND ADJUSTMENT SERVICE

For various reasons, professional violin making -- as an authentic craft -- is dying out. Likewise, the craft of repairing and restoring violins is also dying -- since the finest repairs are done by the finest makers.

Many violin players, especially talented beginning students, stop their development -- or at least are slowed down -- because competent repair and adjustment services just aren't available. So more violins are sold today than ever before (primarily, those of the commercial mass produced or trade-name variety); yet these instruments are frequently in a bad state of adjustment at the time of sale. There is a real scarcity of repairmen with even the minimal, most primitive skills. Consequently, instruments are too often sold without having been adjusted at all.

Advice to the buyer: Never buy a violin or bow from any source -- at any price -- unless the seller has pledged, in writing, to provide competent repair services for a reasonable length of time.

B. COMPETENCE OF REPAIR AND ADJUSTMENT SERVICE

In general, repairs and adjustments should restore a violin or bow to its former value.

1. When we are considering a violin bought only for its utilitarian value, repairs should recover the original level of utility for the instrument's primary player.

2. When we are considering matters other than utility -- i.e., artistic and/or collector's value -- repairs should restore the violin or bow to a condition which comes as close as is possible to its original state.

Advice to the buyer: The greater the value of a violin or bow, the greater the skill needed to repair it. Violins and bows with artistic and/or collector's value should be repaired and adjusted only by professional violin makers.

C. ETHICS OF REPAIR AND ADJUSTMENT SERVICE

The professional ethics of the master violin maker govern his business practices. Those ethics obviously preclude unnecessary repairs, overcharging, etc. But there are additional considerations. Let us open these by mentioning the code of ethics pertaining to the repair of violins and bows with collector's and/or artistic value. This code is summarized in the following pledge:

As an heir to the skills and knowledge developed and perfected by generations of masters of this craft -- and as a custodian of the violins and bows created by other masters, living and dead -- a member of the profession of violin and bow makers does not impose his own artistic values on the violin or bow of any other master but undertakes to preserve and restore their works as originally created by their makers.

However, the practical reality is often another matter. Many violins and bows of collector's and artistic value have lost much of that value inside of repair shops. Why? Because of unethical alterations made to the violin before it was sold, or when it was brought in for adjustment and repair -- alterations which have reduced the instrument's artistic value in ways which the buyer/owner can not possibly know about. The most frequent and most destructive kind of unethical alteration is one that (until disaster strikes) can hardly be detected by anyone other than a professional maker. This is the thinning out or regraduating of a violin's original top and back.

This unethical "repair" is comparable to doping a race horse, thus stimulating overexertion during a short performance while leaving the horse injured (and so less valuable) afterwards.

Through regraduation -- i.e., scraping the top and/or back to make it thinner than the original maker clearly wanted -- one can make any violin more responsive . . . for a short time. The top and back, in relation to their arching and function, are graduated in varied thicknesses -- thicknesses determined by each master's particular theories. The purpose of regraduation is to give the greatest responsiveness to the top and back without taking the pressure and pull of the strings into account. Eventually, this causes deformation of the arching. The added sensitivity of the violin is only temporary. The permanent results include destruction of an important component of the instrument's original artistic value (sometimes 50% or more). But they also include a causes warping of the top, both in front of and behind the bridge, and bulging and cracking at the position of the sound post -- with this leading to a chronic need for sound-post adjustments and a greater susceptibility to damage when humidity levels change.

Advice to the buyer: Such unethical practices are less often found in professionally oriented establishments. They are most common (1) among professional violin makers when they work for -- and are therefore subject to the dictates of -- violin dealers, and (2) among amateur violin makers. (See Chapter 12, "Where to buy a Violin or Repair Service.")

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