natnot

I have a big violin (365mm) - it doesn't fit into some cases (particularly those with very "fitted" cutouts for the instrument body), but sits nicely in my Gewa Maestro shaped case. I had to try a few out before buying.

It's one of the instruments in the violin octet, developed in the 20th century, and is tuned an octave higher than a standard violin. More information: http://www.newviolinfamily.org/

The string cleaner mentioned in the article is not the same as string oil - Pirastro makes 2 separate products, string oil and string cleaner. The string oil is for use on gut, and the string cleaner is for general string (and fingerboard) cleaning. I use it on my Obligatos and it works fine (I only use it occasionally, as I try to wipe the rosin dust off with a cloth every time I put the violin away).

I have a Gliga Gama 2 viola, which I bought from Elida about 6 months ago. Though I haven't played one of the violins, if they are anything like the violas I think they are excellent value for money. I tried out violas in a wide price range in my search, and the Gama compares well to anything I've played in the £2000 range IMHO.

I got the same message earlier, now the page just doesn't load at all..."page cannot be displayed".

Hmm, all this downtime should really mean I do some practice... As to where everyone is - I'm sure there are lots of Fiddle Forumers who don't know about this board or String Asylum. They're probably all practising.

It's back!

The redirect has now gone, looks like the forum will be back with us very soon!

I think I'm getting withdrawal symptoms too...meanwhile, I'll add to the ranks of fiddle forumless people here.

Quote: -- The Value Added Tax (VAT, Mehrwertsteuer in German) (Here I invite other posters' correction, because I may have this wrong.) The VAT is a sizable sales tax of about 15% as I remember it --I hope I'm remembering it wrong and it's a lot lower than that. By buying in Europe, you'd pay the VAT. If you bought the same item in America from an importer, you wouldn't pay the VAT. Thus you may actually pay more for the same item in Europe than you would if you bought it in the US. VAT is currently 17.5% in Europe.

Looking at US versus UK prices, I doubt that you will find things are cheaper here - usually the opposite. The dollar is still pretty weak against the pound. Sometimes I buy from the US, and even with import duties and shipping it often works out cheaper than buying from the UK. Can't speak for Eastern Europe, though - I gather things are cheaper there, but whether they are any cheaper than the US I don't know.

I only took clarinet exams, and then only the lower grades - never took violin exams. But they have a complaints procedure which it may be worth trying if you are very unhappy with the result: http://www.abrsm.org/?page=exams/regs/ukIr...kIre_03_15.html

Ah...it's working for me now. The domain name obviously does exist then... Thanks for the notification.

I just tried to find the Werner Icking archive and I get a message saying the domain name does not exist (I Googled for it). Does anyone know whether the site has been taken down? It used to have some good stuff, I hope it's not gone... natnot

Quote: The main potential trouble being overthinning, which I doubt that many do. The problem is well known: big sound now that dies pretty quick. Do you mean that a violin that is overthinned will actually get worse over time, and will just sound horrible after a few years? I wasn't aware of that. I have always naively assumed that all violins sound better after an initial breaking-in period. Are there instances in which this is not the case, then?