These Are A Few of Our Favorite Strings! Part I, Violins

By Andy Fein, luthier at Fein Violins
and the staff at Fein Violins

Kaplan Violin Strings, Vivo on the left, Amo on the right

Strings can make or break the sound of an instrument. They can help a violin produce a sound that soars over a 120 piece orchestra, or they can make a Stradivarius sound like wet cardboard. And just because your favorite soloist uses "X" strings, doesn't mean that they will work as well with your violin. Violins are like snowflakes - no two are exactly the same (and both have dust in the middle), and as such, a particular set of strings that allows one violin to reach its full potential can inhibit another.

Finding the right strings for your instrument can seem like an uphill battle, but you don't have to do it alone. What follows are descriptions and reviews of popular string brands by and for violinists.

Bruch's Violin Concerto. How to NOT Make Money on a Mega Hit

By Andy Fein, luthier at Fein Violins,
 and Joe Peterson

The Bruch Violin Concerto in g minor is one of the finest concertos in the violin repertoire - it's been performed by nearly every major soloist since its premiere...

from Joseph Joachim

Voller Brothers Violins. Copies, Fakes, or Frauds?

By Andy Fein, luthier at Fein Violins
 & Joe Peterson

Working in a violin shop, we get a lot of phone calls about violins labeled "Antonius Stradivarius".  (How many? Two or three each day!) Excited voices on the other end of the line will haltingly read the label out loud and tell us they just found it an attic, basement, closet, old barn, or under the bed. A lot of these are not-so-well-done factory instruments coming from Saxony and Eastern Europe. An expert can look at these violins and tell what it is before blinking. But some copies are so good they can fool most, if not all, of the "experts"!

Voller Brothers copy of the 1691 'Red Cross Knight' Stradivarius

Hot Enough For Ya? The Life of Stephane Grappelli and "Hot Jazz"

by Joe Peterson, violinist, sales associate at Fein Violins

There is a common misconception that violinists have to start playing at age 6 or younger to get anywhere. Nope. Not true. We have a guy who bought a cello from us, and he started playing at age 70. But unfortunately, people like him aren't the ones all over YouTube. Many aspiring young violinists get discouraged after seeing wunderkind perform; maybe they have tiger parents, maybe they are geniuses (genii?), or maybe they have just a few more years under their collective diaper. Regardless, hope should never be lost! Stephane Grappelli, one of the greatest jazz violinists of all time, was not about that young life. He first picked up a violin at age 12, and his earliest teachers were the mean streets of Paris! By this I mean he was largely self-taught; he'd go and listen to various buskers and copy what he liked.

Joachim and Brahms - It was a love hate sort of thing

By Andy Fein, luthier at Fein Violins
and Joe Peterson



If you were best friends with Brahms, you might hold onto that relationship through all the ups and downs of life. Not so for violin virtuoso Joseph Joachim. A rift between them lasted for years. And it was only a double concerto that could heal the rift.