Barry J. Griffiths

I don’t know what Californians are using but I switched to Everclear. It’s 190 proof grain alcohol (95% alcohol). It costs more than denatured because of all the taxes that get added on to the price since it’s drinkable.

It’s hard to tell where this dot is located on the stick. It could possibly be a filled in hole from where a wire winding was glued into the stick.

From the symptoms you describe and the smaller size of the violin I would take a look at the string distance between the bridge and tailpiece. Sometimes a shorter tailpiece can get the after-length corrected. No major surgery and, if you don’t like the results the whole thing can be easily reversed.

I was cleaning up my workbench (always a dangerous thing) and I rediscovered this violin soundpost from years ago. Overall length of 50mm, width at the ends 6-6.25mm, and width in the middle 4.0mm. I have no idea who made it or what violin it was from. Clean cut ends and very narrow grain (spruce).

I had a number for Sousa’s distributor (Allegro Music) in Miami but they are no longer working with Sousa. If anyone can furnish the contact information for Sousa I would greatly appreciate it.

A violin bow was brought into the shop yesterday. The bow was dropped and the tongue on the frog is broken. The only thing holding the bow together is the glue holding the hair at the spreader wedge. If you push on it it's like rubber. Is this worth fixing or would a replacement frog be a better option? It's stamped Valdecir on one side and Sousa Sonata on the other side. The stick appears to be pernambuco; not sore of the metal used in the mountings. For some reason I can"t seem to attach photos to this post. Thanks for any and all input.

Everything you could possibly want to know about carving a violin bridge can be found here: https://trianglestrings.com/carving-a-violin-bridge/

I've modified my philosophy to "If it's not broken, don't break it".

Can you explain how you bought a violin from Chorberg in 1990 and got a paper from D’attili in 1989?

What's the "Ball Park" value of the instrument?

I’ve seen all of the blocks pictured above. Mine look like something in between #1 and #2. I also see quite a few with a slot filed into the block right in the middle of both blocks which makes block removal very safe and easy. Here is a frog block with the most unusual angled cut to the bottom face. The tip block was the same.

Sold

I couldn't disagree more. In the case of Goldbrokat cheaper does not mean lower quality. Many of my clients prefer Goldbrokat to most other 'better' strings

I tried to change my MN email account. MN sends an email to the new account to verify the change. The email refuses to open despite repeated attempts. I can't even access the message boards. I emailed Jeffrey Holmes and suggested looking for the response in my spam folder. There it was; I opened it and everything is back to normal. For what it's worth I use a MacBook Pro with a Safari browser. Barry

That’s what it looks like to me. The crack or seam extends north of the F hole.