UG Fiddlesmith

Old nice sounding fiddles get played a lot and have a lot of peg wear, holes out of round, pegs out of round, oversized, string hole worn, pegbox hole with 1:25 taper, etc, etc.  Fitting a new 9mm peg often doesn't work well as it gives you a coarse adjustment and difficult tuning-if the old peg is big then the new peg will be bigger and that spells bushing the old hole to get a smaller better tuning peg.  Bushing is a complicated, time consuming, costly.  Hopefully your fiddle doesn't need peghole bushings but if it does count on at least $100 per peg to bush and fit a new ebony peg.  If the peghole is smaller than 9mm then a Perfection peg eliminates the need for bushing and installation really goes quick; the pegs cost about twice as much as ebony pegs but work fairly well.  You can get rid of those pesky fine tuners also.

Agreed.  Lots of work to save a crappy board.  If the instrument is worth the effort, better to replace the board.

 

Brad; I don't mess with white-wood boards, but if I encounter a spotty or streaked ebony one that is otherwise sound, Lady Clairol permanent black hair dye is very effective.

You are sure right about the amount of work for a crappy board; the cello was a new ebay purchase and unplayable-I would have returned it but I did what the customer requested and only with a substantial deposit.  I dyed the f/bd with black shoe dye then sprayed it with black enamel. It doesn't look any worse than when it came in and actually plays.

I hope you avail yourself to considerable reading up on what you propose in popping off the top as it is pretty easy to create a real mess if you don't know what you are doing.  If you pull a lot of splinters the time to repair will be considerable and the value of the instrument will surely decline.  It would certainly be worthwhile to get assistance opening this instrument and don't forget that you have top put the top back on when you are done looking.

Hi David-I always order a new eyelet with a new screw because that often is a tough fit on an old bow; who knows what has been struck in there or rethreaded etc.  I often have trouble with the button being a different diameter than the stick and often the nipple is worn or filed off or screwed uup in some way.  There is a new gadget you can find under the name of bowbadger that looks to do some nice work on that end of the bow stick but I would have to be covered up with work to spend that much.  The dilemma is that this is time consuming excpensive work not warranted for a cheap bow and perhaps to risky to do on a good/great bow.  Hope to pick with you soon in the Grove and perhaps see the results of your efforts.

I have had several Sacconi tailguts slip so I called the number on the paper envelope and pretty much got brushed off. The cost is minor but you loose all the time of resetting up the instrument when it fails; also if the customer takes delivery of his instrument and then the tailgut fails he has to come back in etc. etc. Short answer, I switched to Wittner tailguts and so far no failure. I might try the Kevlar cord although I don't think they will be as easy to adjust. Another problem is tailpieces with built in tuners from China; they fail much more frequently than the tailguts. Maybe one failure a week and we have to replace the tailpiece with a good one.