You see a bargain violin and you immediately ask "What is wrong with it?" In the music store the basic student violin kit may be $100 or more. Other violins cost thousands of dollars. Why the big difference?
I bought one of these cheap chinese kits because I wanted to pick up playing the violin that I gave up when I was about 10 years old. I wanted to see if I could remember anything and get any enjoyment out of it.
After slaving away over this thing for weeks, sounding like a sick cat, I borrowed my sisters German made violin ($400 cost). What a difference! Suddenly I could play.
So I set out to find out the differences between paying under $100 and over $300 for a violin.
1. The Wood
Chinese violins are made from heavier wood, cut thicker, than European and US made violins. The cutting can be rough, and overall the instrument is heavier than a well made equivalent.
2. The fittings.
The pegs in chinese violins are now being made well, so you can tune the instruments. But the tail piece is plastic and can be flimsy. Generally these instruments require more tuning than European/US made instruments.
The bridge supplied with these kits is often poorly cut, and can give a bad lie to the strings. This makes the violin difficult to play. The good news is that you can buy a cheap violin, and stick in a good quality bridge, and vastly improve playability.
3. Fine detail.
A truly great instrument will have a lot of care and attention to detail on inlay of purfling etc etc. Not a concern for the beginner.
4. The Bow
Boy is this an important piece of the kit. The bows supplied in these kits are often fibreglass rather than wood. The main problem with them is that they are rarely straight and do not have a proper "Bow" in the wood, so they don't tighten properly. This means they hop around too much on the strings.
Also, the horsehair is poor quality, and needs lots of good roisin to grip the strings.
The good news is that for under $50 you can probably get quite a nice replacement bow.
5. The roisin.
The block supplied with these kits is dreadful. Toss it out and buy a good German roisin and you won't ever look back.
6. The strings.
Dreadful flat steel wires are supplied with these kits. I pity anyone struggling with them trying to get a tune. Ditch them and buy a decent set.
So, you buy this kit, dump the roisin, bow, strings and bridge, and set it all up from scratch. (You may even replace the tailpiece. What you end up with is a fairly playable piece of kit, and still for less than $200. So it still represents excellent value in comparison with even the factory produced Czech, Romanian and Hungarian instruments.
Ideal for the beginner, until they reach a standard where they will demand a better quality instrument.
Palatino Campus Violin Outfit 4/4 Size (Featherweight Case, Bow)In violin circles we talk about violins and VSO's. A VSO is a violin shaped object. The reputation that Palatinos have among violinists I know, particularly teachers who have new students coming tothem with these VSOs,is as pure junk and well shaped firewood. There are other inexpensive brands that will give you more violin for the money like the Cremonas, but the Palitinos are pretty crummy.
I know what it is like to be poor and not to be able to afford a decent instrument. I know that from having struggled to learn the guitar on 15 buck stellas back in the 1960s. However, if you can possibly wait and save up two or three hundred dollars, you can get a decent enough student violin to be worth it. You will see the difference. For a new person, often the difference might be having an instrument that discourages a beginner from playing and having an instrument that will get the fun of playing the fiddle or violin to be a permanent part of your life.
Unless you know about violins, don't buy one on the Net buy yourself. Find a violin teacher, or someone from the many online groups for beginning violinists. I highly recommend Yahoo's Beginning Adult Violinist group which has thousands of members all over the US and beyond. They can give you advice, go with you to a store, or help you make an online purchase. They can even recommend a violin seller in your area who has a proven reputation or is a member of the group. This how I got a really great deal on a violin worth twice the money I paid for it, found a luthier who wouldn't mind my calling up with dumb questions, fixed my violin for nothing, and has become a friend.
I don't recommend most music stores that are generally stores where they know about guitars and keyboards and have a few violins lying around and know NOTHING or worse only enough to try to get you to buy whatever piece of junk they have. Violin only stores can be good, but they often cater to serious professionals who must have instruments that cost thousands.
Some of the misunderstandings people here talk about show what I mean. It isn't the question of Chinese violins. Almost all inexpensive violins available in this country are manufactured in China, although some are also made in Eastern European countries like Bulgaria.
Chinese luthiers are making some of the finest violins in the world today. Some Chinese luthiers have even set up violin making schools in the US because American luthiers want to learn from them. The question is a cheap Chinese violin under 100 bucks just isn't going to be very much since it just takes a certain amount of effort to build a violin. It is just like the idea that German cars are considered the best, but a 500 dollar German car is probably as much of a lemeon as a chinese violin under 100 bucks.
Even a 10,000 dollar violin that will be a life-joy for a serious player should not be expected to arrive in tune from shipment. In fact, it would be irresponsible for any shipper to send a violin already tuned in full tension. The instrument should be tuned only enough that the sound-post will stay in place. Most string musicians, even less sensitive instruments like guitars or banjos, know that even when they are taking an instrument on a trip themselves, let alone shipping one, to untune the instrument.
There is nothing wrong with a violin whose strings are not in tune. It simply needs to be tuned. Moreover, the normal variations of travel temperature and jostling will set them out of tune. THIS IS GOING TO BE ESPECIALLY TRUE FOR A CHEAP VIOLIN WITH CHEAP POORLY FITTED PEGS LIKE A PALITINO!
Setup, is very crucial for a violin's sound even for an inexpensive violin. Setup involves the placement of the bridge, what size bridge and how the sound post is properly place under the bridge, something that is hard to do as it requires precision. Finding a luthier who will set up a violin for you, and perhaps put decent strings on it, can make a big difference in buying a violin at any price. For someone buying an inexpensive violin it is something relatively inexpensive that can help the sound.
Likewise, the bow is often as important to your sound as your fiddle itself. Moreover, someone with little cash can more easily move up from the 10 or 20 buck bow that comes with these cheap fiddles to a 100 buck bow, than they can move up from a 300 dollar fiddle (most things that cost less are VS0s) to a 800 or 1000 buck fiddle. To me it was shocking how much my playing improved when I went up to a 90 buck bow! Moreover, it is also easier to move up from a 90 byuck bow to a 300 buck bow, than it is to move from a 800 buck violin to a 5k violin.
Finally, buying fiddles on ebay is even more of a turkey shoot than buying one online without advice. There are plenty of vsos up on EBay and plenty of people who are selling cheap violin sets like these as used violins for even more money.
I will repeat what I said before. Don't buy a violin simply from an Internet Ad. Find a violin teacher, or someone from the many online groups for beginning violinists--I recommend Yahoo's Beginning Adult Violinist group which has thousands of members all over the US and beyond--who can give you advice, go with you to a store or help you make an online purchase.
One more positive thing to say is that learning the violin is not as hard as many people imagine it. I started playing the violin at 55. I don't have a lot of time as I work two jobs, have a lot of involvement, and play the guitar and the banjo and have to practice them a lot. Still, once you past the first stage when the violin sounds really awful (my violinist friends said it helped that I am single) you can play the violin enough that it is fun.
Yes, violins are fun! - Beginner Violin - Beginner Violins - Acoustic Violins - Cheap Violin'
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