Post # 3303: Playing a new fiddle

I’ve spent the past month purchasing a new violin — a process that moved much faster than I expected when I first started looking at the end of the summer. Though I’ve played on and off for most of my life (starting at the age of three), I’ve never owned a professional-quality instrument. When I was twelve, my family could only afford to spend about $1,000 on what became my “adult” violin and bow (a factory-made Stainer copy that is about 100 years old now), and as an adult, I’ve never made upgrading a priority. About fifteen years ago I did purchase a 5-string electric-acoustic instrument (a David Gage Realist) which gave me more range and a bigger sound, but it’s still “student-grade” and never really made the cut in terms of warmth and responsiveness.

After committing earlier this year to pay off my credit card debt (which I’ve pretty much done), I decided to start setting aside money for a new fiddle — something to mark my retirement in two and a half years. A milestone gift to myself, because honestly, I’m not getting any younger, and when exactly am I allowed to have a good-quality instrument anyway? (A friend of mine, a dozen years older, advised me this summer that we never know how long we have, and urged me to just put a new instrument on credit and go for it. Only a couple of weeks later, a musician friend of ours passed away suddenly after a catastrophic heart attack. How long, indeed.)

I started looking at instruments in September and quickly realized what a monumental task it would be to find and choose the right one. There are violin shops, private professional sellers, and about a thousand instruments on Marketplace at any given time (many of them total garbage, but some decent – you just have to meet a lot of weird people to find out which is which). I wasn’t sure if I wanted a standard instrument with four strings, or another five-string because I knew that one priority was a smaller and lighter instrument than my Realist due to anterior shoulder issues I’ve had for years (quick fact: 70% of violinists have some degree of muscular-skeletal damage by the time they are in college). Far from being a fun research project, the idea of having to meet a bunch of people and try a thousand instruments stressed me out.

And then I stumbled onto the website of Laura Wallace, a luthier who works (in part) with local wood and custom builds violins and violas. Boxes I didn’t know were on my internal checklist were suddenly ticked: female luthier, local to the west coast, using island maple and spruce. Intriguing! I also saw that her waitlist for a new instrument was at least 18 months, which fit within the timeframe that I wanted to purchase.

So I made an appointment for early October and took the journey to Powell River (two ferry rides and a drive) to meet Laura who turned out to be a delightful human being. I spent two hours in her workshop trading fiddle gossip and comparing the three instruments she had for me to look at with the ones I had brought (I needed to hear mine to know what hers sounded like).

One of the violins was a custom build for a fiddler in Victoria, one was made in 2019 and had just been returned as a downpayment on a new custom instrument, and one was a newer four-string (2022) also available for purchase. All of them are beautiful instruments, but from the very moment I tried all three, only one of them really captivated me – the 2019 build.

I’ll speak more to the instrument in a moment, but before I go on any further, there is a little bit of woo in this story – as there really should be in any tale involving the purchase of an instrument that is to fit within the hollows of the body. A fiddle isn’t just an object to those of us who play, especially if one has played their whole life. We are raised with it as an extension of ourselves and the body adapts around it accordingly (there are several studies that show the neuroscience implications of this, and of course the aforementioned muscular-skeletal damage). We are in a deep relationship to our instrument, and though I’m sure the same can be said for most musicians, violin and fiddle players have always seemed a bit *more* in this regard. When I came into Laura’s studio and said, “do you want to hear my violin story?” she knew exactly what I meant. Violinists and fiddle players always have a story.

I digress. One of the slightly mystical parts of this particular tale is that while I was waiting in the ferry line to Powell River, my mother sent me a somewhat astonished message. She had just woken up, because the YouTube app on her phone had started playing music of its own accord. As she laid there, a bit groggy, she knew it was me playing even though she’d not heard the recording before. When she rolled over to look at her phone, it *was* a video of me playing a song on the beach with a neighbour (something we recorded during the pandemic) – which I had totally forgotten about. Of course there are lots of algorithmic reasons that YouTube might connect my mother to my music, but the timing of it was….. odd. I hadn’t told my parents I was purchasing a new instrument at all and she had no idea I was on my way to go look at fiddles that day. Her phone just happened to spit up a video from three years ago at that moment I was to board the boat.

The second bit of fortune involved in all this is that the day I contacted Laura looking for an instrument that fit some smaller specifications I had in mind, was the same day the first owner of the 2019-fiddle contacted her to arrange a trade in for a different build. This first owner is also a woman of small stature and she had the instrument custom made for her proportions which are apparently similar to mine. Not a terribly dramatic coincidence, but just another bit of timing which gave me a nudge.

I like these kinds of nudges, but I also was entranced by the sweet voice of this instrument, which carries a warmth and body unlike anything had the privilege to play before. Not only that, but the proportions are a perfect fit to my body. It is an Amati copy, slightly smaller than a typical Strad, and the custom build choices resulted in smaller proportions which somehow don’t reduce the sound (which really carries). The violin is made from Vancouver Island Big Leaf Maple (back) and Haida Gwaii Sitka Spruce (front), and finished in a subtle way (not overly antiqued or high gloss).

Now remember, I had met Laura to discuss a custom-build which would be ready in 18-24 months. Trying the three violins was just a way for me to find out about the sound of her instruments – with no intention of walking away with anything. But the fact there was an instrument already made with all my choices – and that I felt magnetically drawn to……

So I brought it home for two weeks to try out, during which time I confirmed a few things important to me. One, the sound is impressive. The sweetness wasn’t a mirage of the studio (or my excitement) and Brian confirms that. I sound like a much better player instantaneously. Two, my left shoulder did not tire out within fifteen minutes of playing and everything just *fits*. And three, it’s just a lot less work to get a good sound out of it in both home and performance environments than my other instruments (I took it to the open mic to test).

After the trial period, I reluctantly returned it to Laura – but only because I wanted some final changes to the fittings! Specifically, a rosewood chinrest (to match to custom-drilled tailpiece) and the installation of Wittner mechanical tuners to replace the friction tuners.

Luckily, we were only parted for a little over a week and a friend returning from Powell River was able to pick up my new fiddle from Laura and bring it to me on Saturday. Can I just say now that I am grateful to the fates that brought us together? Because it does feel a bit fated to be holding this instrument two years earlier than I expected to be.

So that’s the story of my new fiddle, and while it means I’m in debt again, I’m not sorry about it at all. How can one walk away from their perfect match?