This Heavy Rubber 4/4 Violin Practice Mute provides a high level of muting while preserving more tone quality than the metal variety. It greatly reduces volume for apartment and late night practicing. Lightweight and safe. Five-prong.
Price: $8.50
The violin is one of the most popular instruments in the world not only for its acoustic beauty but also for its tradition: the violin and its music goes back centuries. And some actual violins are actually centuries old!
If you find yourself in possession of an antique violin – perhaps one handed down through your family, or a violin you’ve purchased online – you might be interested in assessing its value and potentially selling it for a solid profit. Here are some tips to keep in mind when valuing and marketing your instrument:
First, you’ll need to contact a third-party appraiser. He or she has the experience and training necessary to produce a fair and accurate evaluation of your instrument. After getting your instrument appraised, be sure to obtain a certificate of value from your appraiser. You will need it if you decide to bring your violin to market.
Second, obtain all documentation you can on your particular violin. This will help the appraiser evaluate the origins, and thus the value, of your violin. Antique violins are valued based on a number of criteria. One of the most important is, of course, the age of the instrument: the older, the more expensive (usually). Age in itself is not the determining factor, however. The heritage, or legacy, of the violin is just as important. Perhaps it was made by a famous luthier (violin manufacturer), like Antonio Stradivari. Or perhaps it was owned and played by a famous violinist. This unique individual history of the violin could be of great value to collectors and violinists, your major potential markets for such an instrument.
Third, consider bringing your violin to a luthier for repair if its condition is subpar. Though it will cost you money to restore the instrument to its former glory, you may make more profit out of the violin upon its sale. In fact, some people purchase antique violins in poor condition, only to repair and refurbish them and sell them for a profit. An experienced luthier can take an instrument on its last legs and make it shine once more, increasing its appraised value.
Finally, bring your instrument to an experienced dealer. You will probably have to pay commission to this dealer to help you sell it, but his or her experience and connections will enable you to make a better sale than if you tried on your own with your more limited market and reach.
For more information on buying and selling antique violins, see this article on the antique violin. Other information on antiques can be found here as well, including facts about civil war swords.
Antique violins are not only unique, they are also very valuable. It has been estimated that, on average, these violins increase in value 5% every year. Due to their limited supply, they are very much in demand and could be used to explain this principle in any economics course quite clearly.
A Stradivarius version, made by the master Stradivari, goes for upwards of $2.5 million in auctions around the world. The supply is continuously decreasing as fires, war and inept repairs damage the few remaining in the world.
The Real Value
Yet, why are collectors so fascinated with antique violins? What makes them different from ones that are mass produced every day?
The History
Antique violins were often handmade by such masters as Maggini, Amati and Guarneri as well as the aforementioned Stradivari. Violins constructed in Cremona, Italy during the golden age are the most in demand and retain the best value.
The Greatest Violin?
A Stradivarius is still the benchmark by which all other violins are measured as it produces the clearest sound due to the uniqueness of the wood used to manufacture them. Others just cannot replicate this sound and this adds to the thrill of holding and playing a genuine Stradivarius.
Passing on Family Values
An antique violin may also be treasured as it represents the history of a family. Watching your child learn the basics of tuning and playing your grandfathers musical instrument is priceless. This connection between generations also shows the timelessness of music.
Yet, not only can an antique violin show the history of a family, it can also show the history of violin making around the world. Violins have been manufactured in Italy, Germany, Japan and now China.
Many are handmade, many are from cottage factories and the rest came about as the result of mass production. If someone is trained in the history of this instrument, they can often distinguish where and when a violin was made just by its sound quality.
The Value to a Collector
Antique violins are treasured for their uniqueness in both looks and sound. Collecting has developed into an international hobby as antique violins are from a historical time. This love of collecting has endured over the centuries and only continues to grow.
Just ask any collector who has bid in the millions to own a genuine Stradivarius or waited for hours to attend an auction which features an Amati. Then you’ll understand more about the mind of those so intriqued by the hobby.
Why do They Do It?
If this hobby is still baffling to us, be sure to check out a Mintz concert. It will quickly become clear what the value of an antique violin really is.
Bob Pardue writes about learning sheet music at http://www.largemart.com/
Violin-Four books of Graded Folk Music for Beginners and Advanced Learners of All Ages-Learn to Play the Violin with Favorite Folksongs, and Enjoy the Music! …and Two Theory Workbooks specifically designed for young Violinists.
A hand-carved solid spruce top and solid maple back, sides, and neck deliver fantastic tone. Features a fine tuner tailpiece, ebonized fittings, and inlaid purfling. Comes with bow, rosin, and featherweight suspension case.
Price: $199.00
This 4/4 Size Violin from Saga is solid wood and hand carved with select spruce top, maple back, sides and neck. Also has seasoned maple bridge, solid ebony fingerboard and fittings, inlaid body purfling, alloy tailpiece and four built-in fine tuners. Meets or exceeds MENC (Music Educators National Congress) specs. Comes with hard case, shoulder rest, rosin, bow with genuine horsehair, HOMESPUN dvd, pitch pipe tuner, and accessory carrying case.
Price: $159.99
A lack of musical experience need not be a deterrent in your quest of how to learn violin. In fact, you may find a lack of musical experience to actually be a plus. This is especially true when pursuing your violin instruction via the Internet. Most online violin instruction courses are written for the beginning violin student. Before beginning a violin instruction, however, you must first choose a musical instrument.
You have many options to consider in selecting your instrument. Are you going to buy a new or used instrument? How much are you willing to pay? Are you going to purchase a beginners model, or are you willing to make an investment at this time for professional model?
Some violin virtuosos would never consider buying a new instrument. They would much rather choose an instrument that is antique in nature. Another option is to have a violin custom designed and made for them by a professional violin technician.
As a beginner, you should be able to find a used violin for somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 to 100 dollars. It would be helpful if you could have an experienced violinist play your violin before you purchase it. An experienced musician will also help you be able to look your violin over to check for excessive wear and damage. You may also find it helpful to be able to identify all of the various parts of the violin. This may help when negotiating a fair price for a used instrument.
It is important as you determine how to learn violin that you find a suitable instructor. Quality online instruction courses will teach you starting with the most elementary of the basic skills. You will learn the benefits of posture, both in the sitting and standing position. You will learn proper techniques for picking up and holding your violin. You will discover the various methods of tuning your instrument. Your online instructor should have a positive attitude comes across as it being an honor to have you as one of his students.
Your violin instructor must be proficient in the genre of music that you most want to learn. It would be foolish of you to take lessons from an instructor who only teaches classical violin if your heart’s desire is to learn Irish dance music. It is important to note that most quality instructors will be able to teach violin lessons across several different musical genres.
Another critical component of your violin instruction is music theory. Music theory, simply stated, is the study of what makes music work. Just as there are laws of nature, there are rules of what makes the various components of a musical piece flow together. The study of rhythm and syncopation, melody lines and harmony components, musical dynamics and volume are all studied under the topic of music theory. You should make sure that your violin instruction includes healthy measures of music theory.
Because most online violin instruction is geared toward the musician with no experience, do your homework and make your choices wisely. The choices of how to learn violin will become easy for you.
Hailey Alton is a violin performer, music lover and teacher. For more great tips on How to Learn Violin please visit http://learntheviolinfast.com/
If you are a music lover and wish to buy a violin, worry not. You can easily find a violin for sale. Mostly, you will have to search over the Internet. You will also find violins in musical instrument shops. Have you bought a violin previously? If you have not, find someone with sound knowledge about the instrument. You must consider everything before you decide to buy. Sometimes you get great deals online. It is better to check the instrument thoroughly.
In case you have a limited budget, consider the option of buying a second hand violin. In newspapers, there are several advertisements from those who want to sell their used violins. At times, you can be very lucky to get a superb deal from such violin on sale advertisements. Musical instrument like violin can be very expensive. You could also get cheap ones, but they will not be as musical. Scan the instrument thoroughly before you can buy it. A good quality violin can cost you a couple of thousands of dollars. The price could range between a few hundred to a thousand dollars.
When you wish to place an order online, try to be sure of the supplier’s reputation. The supplier might charge you lots of money for the shipping expenses. Hence, try to look for a shop or company that is closer to where you stay. Moreover, if the violin travels big distances, there is a possibility of damage. You would definitely not like to see your new violin broken or chipped from anywhere. To the extent, possible, try to pick up the piece on your own. This will help you examine the instrument you are paying for.
Why insist on the quality of the instrument? It is to save you from landing up with an inferior quality violin. It will be impossible to learn on an inferior instrument. If music does not come from the violin, what is the point of investing in it? It would really hurt if your new violin were not melodious and musical.
More advice for you – if you plan to buy a violin please learn a little about the instrument before you go to buy. It is not like buying an item from your grocery list. You do not spend on a musical instrument every day. You buy it once and it stays with you. You must read about violins and understand a little about the basics of the instrument. Go through books on violin. Surf the Internet and gather as much information as you can. Thus, you will be in a better position to judge whether a particular instrument is worth buying. If you know someone who has knowledge about violins, I suggest you take the person along for help.
Music truly uplifts the soul. It takes you in a different world. In addition, a beautiful instrument like violin is great to possess. Moreover, if you want to put up your violin for sale you must first speak to all your known acquaintances and spread a word. It is best to sell to a known person. In case you do not get a buyer, try advertising in newspapers or on the Internet. Even musical instrument stores will guide you on this.
G. Smitty is a writer who loves to discuss many topics ranging from violin shoulder rest to professional basketball. Thanks for reading!
Are you looking for an antique violin case? If you answered no, you are in no danger of being alone in this. No one shops for antique violin cases. So why would antique violin cases be a topic for an article? The answer is because there are millions of old violins out there and each of them has a case. The violin sells but no one wants the cases so they sit in someone’s attic for decades. Upon discovery, they are assumed to have value. This article will explain why they don’t have any value.
o Old violin cases are very bare bones. They are usually wood that has been covered by a little bit of felt. The latches were pretty bare even when the case was new and they are not replaceable. New violin cases are somewhat boxy. The inside cut to hold the violin firmly in place in a cocoon of protective foam and felt. There is no way the violin rattles around inside and if the case is dropped accidentally, the new case absorbs the shock and protects your violin which of course is the primary investment here.
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o If antique violin cases did have this protection, they were hard covered cases filled with a much heavier shock absorbing material. So for an old case to compete on the protective level with a new case, it loses it on weight. It will be substantially heavier than the new cases offered on line.
o One of the protective functions of a case is to keep the violin wood humidified. In the more expensive violins a humidifier is included. In the cheaper ones you can buy a $5 accessory on line to put in your new case.
o Old violin cases have room for the violin and bow and that is about it. You need another backpack to carry the other things you need when you are going somewhere to play your violin. Modern cases are much more thought out. There is usually a pouch to put your sheet music on the outside and inside there are compartments for your rosin, tuning fork or extra strings.
o The bottom line is always money. An old violin case may cost you $5 to $20. New ones range from $50 to $500. You will obviously buy the cheaper unit for your student violin or your practice violin and pay the big bucks for a nice case for your “special violin”.
We were left over 60 antique violins and each one had an antique violin case. The violins have value but I have never gotten a cent for any of the antique violin cases. So if you find one and think there may be some value in the case, save your time and energy to focus on the valuable things that you have received. Antique violin cases have absolutely no value.
If you are shopping for violin cases go new and go on line. You will almost always have to special order a nice case from a violin shop so why not do it yourself. Even for the less expensive cases you will probably find that you will save both time and money by buying online.
We inherited 60 violins a few years ago. Most folks only inherit one or two. The violin marketplace is like any market niche. You need to know the technical stuff, the movers in the market and how to get full value for your goods. The folks in the violin market do not give up the inside info easily and there is nothing in the form of a violin market guide except buyer beware and seller beware. So one of my missions is to use the new publishing tools to help folks raise their awareness of the violin market, how it is constructed and how the internet is opening up this market niche. I hope you find these insights helpful and use some of the resources that I offer up.
Jean Baptiste Vuillaume was undoubtedly the most successful violin maker of the 19th century. In fact, in pure business terms, he probably was the greatest luthier in history, Stradivari not excepted. Very rarely does such consummate craftsmanship reside in the same character as single-minded ambition, intelligence and entrepreneurial skill. From a traditional and unexceptional violin-making background in Mirecourt, he built a virtual empire in Paris in the second half of the century, and his influence can still be readily seen and felt in all aspects of the craft and trade in bowed stringed instruments.
He was born in Mirecourt in 1798, a small town in the Vosges which had long been focused on instrument making. His father, Claude-Francois, was quite undistinguished as a violin maker, but the family had been active in the craft since the early 17th century. Jean-Baptiste showed his ambition early on, and having served an apprenticeship with his father, struck out for the capital in 1818, where he found work with Francois Chanot. Chanot was an experimenter- one of the first makers to attempt to apply scientifically informed acoustic principles to his work, he surely stimulated Vuillaume’s enquiring and imaginative mind during the first three years of the young luthier’s career in Paris. In 1821, Vuillaume moved on to the workshop of Nicolas Antoine Lete, a fellow native of Mirecourt, where he stayed, ostensibly as a partner, until 1825.
Meanwhile, Vuillaume had been making his own instruments and refining his Mirecourt style to match the innovations of the great Nicolas Lupot. Lupot was at that time the finest maker of the Paris school, responsible for re-establishing the classical principles of Stradivari, underpinned by rigorous craftsmanship and an academic approach to detail and accuracy. All these ideas provided the environment within which Vuillaume was to flourish and triumph. Lupot died in 1824, leaving no heirs to his business other than his apprentice Charles Francois Gand.
From 1823 onward, Vuillaume began labeling his own work, which consisted of evenly varnished dark red instruments in the style of Lupot. He was also already closely involved with bow-making, and from 1823 employed Persois to provide bows for his instruments. Always prolific, like others with a Mirecourt training, by 1828 he had made around a hundred violins, and was ready to move on from Lete’s shop. He established his own business at 46 Rue des Petits-Champs, right in the heart of the city in what is the 2nd arrondissement, behind the Tuileries gardens.
A significant breakthrough came around 1827, when he began to make instruments with an antiqued finish in imitation of the great Cremonese instruments which were rapidly rising in value and appreciation. The same idea had occurred to the Fendt family working in London around this time, where the market for authentic Cremonese instruments was developing with equal speed.
Vuillaume quickly mastered techniques for giving his instruments an aged appearance, with darkened wood and worn varnish, setting the standard in this for many other Parisian makers. Business flourished, and he expanded his workshop by taking on assistants, mostly highly skilled craftsmen from Mirecourt, including Hippolyte Silvestre and Honore Derazey, both to become important makers in their own right.
In examining original instruments in order to reproduce them, Vuillaume’s eye as a connoisseur developed also, and business as an expert dealer in antique instruments brought in more custom to his Paris shop. By 1850, his business was on a truly international level. and Charles Adolphe Maucotel had risen to become his workshop foreman.
Vuillaume was responsible for the manufacture of many of the best bows to come out of Paris at this time. He paid great attention to the bow and its development, benefiting enormously from the presence of Francois Tourte, ‘the Stradivari of the bow’, who was still active when Vuillaume began his business. Vuillaume employed many of the great names in French bow-making, beginning with Persois in 1823, to Dominique Peccatte, and Pierre Simon, who was Vuillaume’s chief archetier until 1846.
Throughout this period Vuillaume worked on imaginative ways of improving production, and has a particular reputation as an innovator, although few of his ideas have stood the test of time. The self-rehairing bow, and the steel bow are amongst these ingenious and well-intentioned, but ill-fated ideas. He investigated the history of the violin with the help of his friend, the musicologist Francois Fetis, but was rather over-enthusiastic in his patriotic attempts to find a role for French makers in the invention of the instrument.
Vuillaume’s crowning achievement was the purchase of the Tarisio collection in 1855. Luigi Tarisio, an eccentric Italian collector who had become known to Parisian dealers in the earlier part of the century, died in that year, and Vuillaume lost no time and spared no effort in securing a deal with his family in order to buy the remaining instruments. The horde was spectacular, possibly unrivaled in history, and included over one hundred of the finest Cremonese, as well as twenty-four outstanding Stradivaris. Among the latter was the ‘Messie’ of 1716, acknowledged as the greatest and most original surviving instrument from the Stradivari workshop. It is now housed in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford.
Vuillaume’s reputation was now unassailable, and in 1858 he moved for the last time to the rue Demours Les Ternes, a little to the west of the old shop.
Vuillaume continued working virtually until his death in 1875. He had no male children to continue the workshop, although his brother Nicolas-Francois (1802-1876) and nephew Sebastien (1835-1875) were both makers.
J.B.Vuillaume left a massive legacy of fine instruments. They fall into several categories: the early, fully varnished examples of the period 1823- 1827, generic imitations of Stradivari and Guarneri, close copies of specific master violins, other instruments made in various styles of Brescia and the Amati, several experimental designs and other fantastical historical replicas. Another considerable body of work is represented by the ‘St Cecile’ instruments- these were manufactured in Mirecourt to Stradivari and occasionally Guarneri models, and sent to Paris for varnishing, which was finished in complete, ‘unworn’ red-brown, complete with a transfer depicting St Cecile on the upper back. These were intended to be sold at cheaper prices, and were made between 1843 and 1856.
The most obvious characteristic of much of his work is the wear-pattern imposed into the varnish of the back, which is often in the shape of an inverted ‘V’, with the edges broken into small islands of the thicker, coloured varnish contrasting with the pale grey/gold ground of the wood. The varnish is of fine quality and colour, if a little harder that the old Cremonese recipes he set out to emulate. His imitations of Brescian and Guarneri instruments are slightly less successful than the Stradivari copies, his strongly disciplined and technical approach never quite conveying the freedom of the originals. Early works carry his handwritten label. Subsequently he had printed labels made for his two addresses, and also branded, signed and numbered the interior. Some early replicas carry imitation labels of Stradivari and lack the maker’s signature and brand. The quality of his work is almost impossible to replicate, and has well-stood the test of time. Although the vast majority of his instruments are imitations of classical Cremonese pieces, the originality of his mind and his creative genius is evident in every aspect of his career.
Brompton’s Auctioneers, Albemarle Street, Mayfair, London W1S 4BS.
http://www.bromptonsauctioneers.com
