More musical mending

My OH bought me another Violin !
He got it from Ebay for a tenner and had to go and fetch it.

This new, old violin is quite interesting.
It is a good 100 years old.
Inside is a label describing it as 'The Maidstone'
It came in an old black wooden box like a coffin.
The metal label on the box says 'Maidstone School Orchestra ASST London'.

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Apparently there was a smiley, kind, factory owner named Murdoch who wished to bestow his beneficence on the great unwashed by putting the ownership of violins  within their grubby little grasps.
He imported many Instruments from Czechoslovakia and Germany and then sold them to the plebs on weekly terms.

While that sounds like a wonderful thing to do, it does grab me by the ears and shout opportunist very loudly.
Thousands of these instruments were sold to people who paid for them weekly because there was no way they could afford them outright.
The resulting orchestras wowed the upper classes, (proving you could teach human Monkeys to perform given the right tools).

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It reminds me very much of the weekly payment schemes of modern life in which a £150 computer can become yours for only 36 monthly payments of  £10..
The cost to you is £360 and at the end of the two years you may still be able to use the machine for simple applications assuming that software is still compatible.
The antivirus and office packs included were of course either cut down versions or only free trials and the computers are the absolute bare minimum that can run the OS installed .

Or  the mobile phone you are on 24 month contract for, includes a tablet and the 'whole bundle is yours for just £50 a month.
You receive a phone worth about £80 retail or less, a tablet worth about £70 and a lot of phone use worth about £20 a month .The whole bundle worth under £400 and the actual cost to you...£1200

The companies that provide the 'deals' have bought them en mass and so can get a very good deal on them.
Possibly 100 for a laptop 50 for a phone , 40 for a tablet. Their company will claim every possible penny back through the tax man that they can.

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Suddenly that Violin man seems less smiley.

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Anyway...

My Violin as I was informed it now was, needed a little tidying up................
The varnish was scratched A lot!
The strings were unattached.
The cork on the chin rest was  wearing off
Only a thin layer of hair remains on the bow.

Of the box......
There was a big hole and some splits in the wood.
3 tiny woodworm holes.
The lid is not a good fit being about 1/4 inch smaller than the bottom.
The green felt lining is torn and there are places where it has  either pulled away from its cardboard or where the cardboard has torn off all together.

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Having examined it closely, I discovered that the chin rest is newer,at least bought since 1973 because it had £1.39 on a little sticker on its underside proving it was bought after the  decimal conversion.

The tail piece could be original and sports a fine tuner on the E string .
Three of the pegs look to be ebony throughout and the fourth is a little shorter with a pearl dot inset into one end,I think this is ebony too as it is just like the new ebony pegs I bought for the modern violin .

Although there are 4 strings and all are complete,they look brittle and feel rough.
One, the D string, is gut,the others are metal.

In the box is a little metal mute , a lump of hard rosin ,a padded, black velvet shoulder cushion with a leather strap and the bridge.

The box is heavy with a lock but no  key and a small ,thin ,metal ,trunk style handle .

So far I have tidied and restrung the violin .
It has a different tone to the newer instrument and plays nicely.
I will put photos up when I get around to uploading them from my phone.

strumming and what not

I have made inroads with the  mended violin.
I can now muddle my way through a few tunes and it is sounding less and less like a cat strangler.
I finally bought new pegs for it as nothing seemed to get the pegs to stay put.
The new pegs were much much better and it now stays in tune.

It was sounding quite tortorous until I realised I had been using too much rosin.
Now it is getting quite smooth.
I was watching Yehudi Menuin play and discovered his 'body sway' thing and it really does help to get a smoother sound because sometimes it is the bow moving over the strings and sometimes (with the sway), it is the violin moving under the bow.

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Oh has a guitar and a Mandolin ,both of which he bought himself new and I fancied trying out guitar ,so I gave it a go with a little disused guitar  that he owns.
We bought it for him about 18 years ago and it is quite small with steel strings.
My poor likkle fingers! The strings are hard work to press down.
OH doesn't use it ,deeming it rubbish.

Looking in the shed where I thought there was another, much older guitar, I came across the remains of the one that his family had owned and maltreated.
This guitar is bigger, more a normal size for an accoustic guitar.
It had almost all its strings broken and on further investigation (once I had extricated it from the tools and bits of old table, I found its bridge was almost completely removed from the body.

Once in the house, I discovered that there were no pegs to keep the strings in, instead someone, it was OH, had pushed the ends of felt pens in to the holes.
They fitted but were all bent up or sheered off.

I took them out .

A new set was about £3.50 on ebay so I sent for some and a new set of strings (£3.99).

I cleaned the poor old guitar body. It was grimey.
There were a couple of places where the body was parting company with the sides but only just, so I ran PVA into the cracks and clamped them shut.

The bridge needed sanding and the place where the bridge had come off was sanded so there was a rough area for the glue to key to.
Then I pushed a lot of flower pots up inside the body of the instrument and eased a thin piece of wood on top so that when I weighed the bridge down to get the glue to stick, it would not break the guitar.

Once all was glued, I blackened in the fingerboard between the frets with a black Sharpie.
It was like a magic wand and once I reblackened the bridge, it looked so much better.
The new pegs and strings came and I strung it using OH's guitar as a guide.

I found a tuning guide online and tuned it and now have quite a nice guitar to learn on.

Looking inside,the label says Madrigal which I think are made in spain.

OH doesn't remember who originally owned this instrument , he cant remember it being bought so it is likely from the 1950's or 60's and purchased for  his father .

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On the flat let side...
We have had a first small payment from the agents.
We had it about 3 or 4 hours and then paid the electrician who had installed the new bathroom extractor and moved a light fitting.
It paid for half his invoice.
So the first income from the flat is -£130