1890s German-made 4/4 Fretted Violin

Well, I'm becoming no stranger to putting-together fretted fiddles. It doesn't make the job of conversion any easier, though! Don't look too close at the work on this guy -- there's an uneven fret here and there -- oh, sigh -- it's not easy to get everything perfect on such a steeply-radiused board. It makes all sorts of trouble. It's good enough for government work, though, for sure...

A customer of mine had been chatting to me about wanting to play violin and I'd told him about a few fretted fiddles I'd cooked-up in the past and so he brought a funky, modern, Chinese-made instrument to convert a long time back. I set it aside for a "rainy day repair." When I took it out again I decided it was just too poor an instrument to convert and so went searching in my broken fiddle pile instead and fished this out for him

I'd told him I was cooking-up a different instrument already but I think he'll be surprised that it's not the 1990s Chinese instrument I'd told him I'd scrounged-up to replace his (far worse) 1990s Chinese instrument and is instead an 1890s German one. It's nicely-made, too, with fancy flamed maple all over the back and sides and a tightly-grained spruce top plus ebony fittings.

The work process was simple -- remove the fingerboard, cut slots and fit frets (this is actually quite frustrating, believe me), and reinstall the fingerboard. After that I just reglued some loose seams on the body, fit a soundpost and bridge, and setup as normal. I used some D'Addario perlon-core strings (a lot like Dominants) and also fit 4:1 geared Perfection Pegs at the headstock. This last bit of modification is super-nice to have on a fiddle because you don't have to stress over slipped pegs or tuning stability.

It's an unmarked instrument but clearly it's a winner. It's nice to play fast licks and not be out-of-tune save for flubbing it a bit. One still has to be careful, though, because if you play and your finger is just "sliding" above the frets on the string you will still get an off note. With these you have to press-in enough to make good contact -- though the action is so light and fast it's really just thoughtlessness that will get you in trouble.