Fiddle Kit

I bought this kit to experiment with alternative ways of putting a fiddle together. I was mainly concerned with the neck joint. The mortise and tenon joint at the neck is notoriously difficult to cut with hand tools. Furthermore, the earliest violin builders (surprisingly, that includes Stradivarius) did not cut a mortice and tenon joint but nailed their neck to the sides of the violin. So I decided to try something similar, but instead of nailing the neck to the body I used the neck bolts available at stewmac to bolt the neck to the body. The final result was a nice sounding fiddle. Bolting on the neck had no impact on the sound while it was much easier to get the correct neck angle. The kit itself consisted of high quality wood. Nice straight grained spruce and nicely flamed maple. The scroll was really nicely carved as well. I would have given the kit 5 stars but there were number of tear outs on the back and the purfling channel was cut rather sloppily in some places. However, given that the majority of the work was already done this was a great way to experiment and the quality of the wood made up for any other short comings of the kit.

My first violin, loved building it, being a woodworker for many years, this was a new area for me. My friend who prodded me to take on such a project played it for the first time for me the other day and said it sounded great. After all that effort, if it looks great but sounds crappy, you don't have an instrument, but that was not the case, it got great reviews from some real good musicians. Got a little more help with some books and some online sources, but the instruction book pretty much covers most of it. One thing though, BUY rosin for your bow, the book does not mention this, and for a non-player this was new to me, minor detail, no rosin on bow, no sound. This one I'm keeping, but I will be ordering another kit shortly.

I'm not exactly the most experienced instrument builder, I do it as a hobby in my spare time, and this was my first fiddle. A friend of mine asked me to build this for him and it was mostly a pleasure. Putting the finish on was probably the most difficult part because it does not come with any finish and it's sort of up to you to get the right stuff, not being experienced in violins/ fiddles I had a little trouble. Also the grainy black and white photos in the instructions are not a great help, but aside from that the instructions were very detailed and helpful. Overall it probably would have been easier for me if I knew anything about violins or played one. In the end it came out looking and sounding great any way. I guess if you're inexperienced like me take the time to do the steps properly and the results will be good, and if you know what you're doing then the parts seemed great to work with.

I first played the violin when I was about 12 years old. That was 55 years ago. I thought the Fiddle Kit was a way to renew an old friendship. To date I have the body completed and I am working on the neck and finger board. I had a problem with the top not being wide enough to leave material to round over the edges. I added four pieces of poplar and smoothed them in. This took a lot of time and could have been avoided if the top was more generous. The adventure continues! I made 16 spool clamps and they may be waiting for a mandolin kit.

The violin kit far exceeded my expectations. I saw this all-in experience as a sort of correspondence course on how to make a violin, so if I was challenged, the more the merrier. The purfling was my first and turned out well. The instructions were also first-rate. I glued on the neck having gone through all the steps and discovered that I was 1/16" off. With timely, bang-on advice from your technical department, I steamed off the neck, made the fine adjustments and was back on the road. I'm now fine sanding getting ready for the finish. All the woods are quite beautiful and of a high grade so I am looking forward to the final result. I thoroughly enjoyed the journey, albeit a bit rocky in places (all down to the vagueries of human skill, not at all the fault of the kit or instructions). An outstanding product.

I have ordered three of your kits and I can say they are fairly simple to build"well at least until you really read up on violin building. The kit itself I will give 5 thumbs and the service 10. I originally bought the kit to prepare for the mandoline kit. I honestly believe that I am stuck on the violin!

My only complaint wood be the purfling channels were rough at the points and had to be filled...but the sound is fantastic compared to the new custom hand built fiddles that come through
my shop....sorry guys but my finish is better too (-: I will build more.

This is the first time that I try to built a violin kit. Your kit is easy to perform, but its sound is surprisingly great beyond my expectation. with much Thanks, Hiro from Toyama

If you are just starting out, this is a great kit to learn the ropes. You might seek other sources of information outside the provided manual, but even if you don't you'll get good results. I chose to French polish the violin with amber shellac which really made the book-matched curly maple back the focus.

For experienced luthiers, this could be a fast track to produce a good quality instrument at an affordable price. You can certainly separate the back plate from the sides and do some additional thinning after performing frequency analysis to tune the plates. There is still plenty of work to be done, but this would certainly save you some time and effort.

I would definitely recommend this kit. I had some minor issues with the first one shipped to me. I contacted customer service and explained the issue and they sent another one out. Completely satisfied and nice to know that there are some places that haven't outsourced their customer service overseas.

I'm not going to rant, rather warn. Check everything when it arrives.

Make sure things fit, that holes are drilled in the correct place, that the neck is not bowed or twisted. If I had double checked everything I would not have started working on it and would have happily returned it for another one (based on the all the rave reviews). My nice winter project has turned into months of doing it myself. On the up side... I learned a lot about making a violin by having to fix or remake kit parts that were substandard.
Did I mention... check everything before you start. If you're not happy, send it back.