Okay, catherine's violin didn't exactly explode but it did make a loud noise as the bridge shot out and the strings collapsed. Catherine looked at me and I looked at her and we both cursed (again) the cheap violin I'd bought her.
Lessons were today so we packed up the violin and bridge and saved them for the instructor. Got there, has a great talk (sorted out all my previous concerns with her- basically I was panicking for nothing) and then she put the bridge back in. Catherine played for five minutes and then... *CRACK* the bridge broke in two and dropped onto the floor. The teacher was more then a little frustrated at this point. She confiscated it so the music shop owner could have a look at it and see if it could be fixed or there's was something defective about the body and construction.
The lesson - If you're going to buy a violin, do your homework and open your pocketbook. Cheap violins are hard to keep tuned, awkward to use and prone to failure.
4 comments:
aw man, that sucks. Catherine must have been frustrated & disappointed with it....
If you have to go searching for a new one, there's bound to be a place in the city where you could get something good at a reasonable price... of course, I've never bought a violin, so I'm not sure what kind of 'reasonable' is actually reasonable....
The violin instructor said $400 to $700 is probably in the reasonable range. I wish we'd talked to her before buying one...One of the hazards of having music lessons IN a studio where instruments are sold I suppose.
On the bright side she said she'd been looking into learning the accordian. A reasonable accordian is in the range of $3000.
Ouch! To all of those prices! I LOVE accordians - but I've never priced one...
right about now I'm kinda glad that Cindy's "instrument" is her voice...'course, I'm paying a rather large chunk for private vocal lessons, but at least if her voice 'breaks', I just have to cough up a few bucks for some Halls. ;-)
You're right about cheap violins, but you have to make sure your kid really wants to play before investing in a good one. If she really gets into it, get her the best you can afford when she can handle a full size instrument. Honestly, though, you can have those problems even with very good instruments. Violins are temperamental.
For small and cheap violins, you may be better off renting them, and bringing them back when there are problems.
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