South African violin maker: Jan van Rooyen

Wizard

This (brilliant) youngster Warren Luther plays a violin made by a SA born violin maker (now based in US)
Pretty fantastic:

http://www.gviolins.com/index.cfm

Wizard

I actually spoke to Brian to see if he'd service my violin.
(Violins have very primitive tuning pegs that misbehave quite often)

He referred me to a Vivienne Cowley in the city who sorted me out.

As an aside I saw a work-in-progress violin she had been making for the last 2 years or so.
She was saying she'd need to sell it for about 40k to break even ... after all the imported wood & parts & silly amounts of labour required.
Easy to become complacent about cheap instruments after you've got accustomed to them being churned out by cheap labour in large quantities.

vic

Wizard wrote: I actually spoke to Brian to see if he'd service my violin.
(Violins have very primitive tuning pegs that misbehave quite often)

He referred me to a Vivienne Cowley in the city who sorted me out.

As an aside I saw a work-in-progress violin she had been making for the last 2 years or so.
She was saying she'd need to sell it for about 40k to break even ... after all the imported wood & parts & silly amounts of labour required.
Easy to become complacent about cheap instruments after you've got accustomed to them being churned out by cheap labour in large quantities.

The violin,cello and double bass family demands high prices....for eg a good carved "budget" double bass for concert purposes starts at 5000 GBP and 10,000 GBP is about average in these entry-level basses ! ?