StringsCircle

If you play with a fallen soundpost, you put your instrument at risk of breakage.

If your soundpost is fitted too tight, your instrument will vibrate much less.

If your soundpost is glued, your instrument will sound terrible.

Acquiring a great instrument is one thing, maintaining it is another.

In parts where it might be easier to find dinosaurs than luthiers, handling your instrument like an egg cannot be overstressed.

Have these at your fingertips:

*Keep your instrument away from fluids.

*Don't keep your instrument without its box at extreme temperatures.

*Always use rosin.

*Don't play with a fallen soundpost.

*When your soundpost is fixed, it should be done without glue.

Unboxing the violin could be one of the hardest aspects of practising. I always prefer to keep my violin without the box so I can easily pick it up and play on impulse.

But keeping the violin outside its box at extreme temperature (too hot or too cold) isn’t safe for it.

What do y’all prefer?

The quality of the instrument one uses greatly influences his/her growth.

A good instrument helps you practice more because you enjoy the sound you hear, and vice versa.

A good instrument vibrates more and greatly helps intonation.

I’ve used very low-quality instruments that were nearly impossible to produce harmonics with, and very unresponsive, overall.

I’ve also used bad bows with which it was very difficult to execute some bow techniques such as sautille, spiccato, and ricochet. Techniques take longer to accomplish, and it is hard to produce a good sound on a bad instrument. Thereby elongating the overall time taken for the musician to reach a given skill level.

However, if one can accomplish a certain task with a bad instrument, he/she may do even better with a good one. Or, if one sounds good on a bad instrument, he/she might sound even better on a good one. But overall, the disadvantages of having and learning on a bad instrument outweigh the benefits.