Bow Rehair & Violin Repair

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Bow Rehair & Violin Repair

Hans Quintero, Luthier
Violin • Viola • Cello • Bows | Students and professionals welcome

Welcome. My name is Hans Quintero and I repair, adjust and set up bowed string instruments from a workshop behind my house. I have done this work for twenty-six years, the last fourteen of them here. My customers are mostly students and their parents, the teachers in the area, members of the community orchestra, a few professionals who drive in from the city, and every fall a great many school rental violins that have had a hard summer in a closet.

This page is meant to tell you plainly what I do, what it costs, and how long it takes, so you know before you call. If your question isn't answered here, e-mail me. I would rather answer a question than have you guess.

Prices and Turnaround (violin and viola; cello prices on request)
Service	Price	Usual turnaround
Bow rehair (violin, viola or cello bow)	$35	2-3 days; same day by arrangement
New bridge, fitted and cut to the instrument	$60	2-4 days
Soundpost adjustment	$20	While you wait, usually
New soundpost, fitted	$45	1-2 days
Open seam, glued and clamped	from $30	2-3 days (glue must dry)
Full setup (see what's included)	from $120	1 week
Pegs refitted (set of four)	$40	2-3 days
Fingerboard dressed (planed true)	$55	3-4 days
New nut	$30	2 days
Strings installed (you supply or I supply at cost)	$8 plus strings	While you wait
School rental checkup (see below)	$15	While you wait
Cracks, top or back	Estimate	1-3 weeks depending
Estimate / look-over	Free	By appointment

Prices are for labor and ordinary materials and are good through the end of 1999. Cello bridges, soundposts and setups cost more because the parts are larger and the work is slower; ask. Payment by check or cash when you pick up. I do not do appraisals for insurance and I do not sell instruments, though I am glad to look at one you are thinking of buying and tell you what I see.

What a Setup Includes
"Setup" is the word for everything on an instrument that can be adjusted to make it play well: the parts that touch the strings and the parts that carry the sound. A well-made violin with a poor setup plays badly, and an ordinary student violin with a good setup plays far better than it has any right to. Most instruments that come to me from a catalog or a music store have never had one. A full setup at my bench includes:

The bridge. Cut from a maple blank and fitted so its feet match the curve of the top exactly, with no gap; then trimmed to the right height and curve so the strings clear the fingerboard by the proper amount and the bow can reach each string without catching its neighbors. A bridge is not a stock part; every one is fitted to one instrument.

The soundpost. A spruce dowel that stands inside the instrument, held only by friction, between the top and the back, just behind the treble foot of the bridge. It carries vibration to the back and props up the top under string pressure. Moving it a millimeter changes the sound of the whole instrument, which is why the French call it the soul. I fit it to the curves inside and set it where the instrument sounds best.

The nut. The small ebony piece at the top of the fingerboard. Its grooves set the string height at the first position; too high and the first finger hurts, too low and the open strings buzz.

The pegs. Fitted so they turn smoothly and hold. Pegs that slip or stick are the single biggest reason a student stops playing, because the instrument is never in tune and tuning is a fight.

The fingerboard. Checked for grooves and hollows and planed true if needed.

The tailpiece and tailgut adjusted to the right length, fine tuners checked so they don't scratch the top, the endpin checked for fit, and strings of a suitable kind installed and brought up to pitch. Then I play it for a day and adjust the post again if it wants it.

For a rental or a beginner's instrument I do a lighter version: bridge if needed, post, nut, pegs, strings. That is the "from $120." A professional's instrument getting the full treatment takes longer and costs more, and we will talk about it first.

About Bow Rehair
The hair on a bow is horsehair, taken from the tail, and I use unbleached white hair from Mongolia, which is the standard for good work. Each hair has a rough surface, like tiny scales, that the rosin clings to; that is what grips the string. Over time the hairs break (a good bow loses a few every week of playing), they stretch, and they wear smooth, and the rosin has nothing to hold onto. The signs that a bow needs rehair: the hair is visibly thin, especially on one side; there are more than a few broken hairs; the bow slides across the string without speaking even with fresh rosin; or the hair has stretched so far that the frog is screwed all the way back and it still won't tighten.

A player who practices daily should expect a rehair about once a year; twice a year for a serious student or a professional; every two years or so for a casual player. A rehair does not make an old, tired bow into a good one, but it makes any bow play the way it was meant to.

The job itself: I remove the old hair, clean the mortises in the head and the frog, tie a fresh hank of hair, fit it with small wooden plugs and a wedge, set the length so the bow tightens properly at room humidity, comb it straight and rosin it lightly. Two or three days, because I like the hair to settle overnight before I set the final length. If you are in a bind before a concert, tell me and I'll do it the same day.

While the bow is apart I check the tip for cracks, the screw and eyelet for wear, and the lapping and thumb leather. If something else needs doing I'll tell you before I do it.

Please: loosen the hair every time you put the bow away. Don't touch the hair with your fingers. Don't over-rosin. And if the tip breaks, don't glue it; bring me the pieces.

Humidity and Care: Read This Before Winter
A violin is thin spruce and maple glued together, and it moves with the weather. Half of the repairs I do between November and March would not have been necessary if the instrument had been kept out of dry air.

What happens in winter. When the furnace comes on, the air in a house can drop below 20 percent humidity. Wood dries and shrinks. The top shrinks across the grain, and something has to give: either a seam opens where the top meets the ribs (this is the good outcome; the seams are glued with hide glue on purpose so they let go before the wood does) or the top cracks. Pegs shrink and slip. The soundpost, which fit perfectly in August, is now loose and may fall. The instrument sounds thin and buzzy and won't stay in tune, and the player thinks it's their fault.

What to do. Aim for 40 to 60 percent humidity around the instrument. In practice:

Keep the instrument in its case when it's not being played, with the case closed.
Use a case humidifier from November to March: the tube type that goes in the f-hole, or the kind that clips inside the case. Fill it every few days. Don't overfill it; water dripping inside the instrument is worse than dry air.
A cheap humidity gauge in the case is worth the five dollars.
Keep the instrument away from radiators, heat vents, woodstoves and the trunk of the car. Never leave it in a car in winter or summer.
If you can run a humidifier in the room where it's kept, so much the better; your furniture and your sinuses will thank you too.

What to do if a seam opens. You'll hear a buzz, and you may see a hairline gap along the edge of the top or back. Loosen the strings a little and bring it in. Don't glue it yourself; household glue is permanent and will cost you real money to undo later.

What to do if the soundpost falls. Loosen all the strings right away, all the way, before you do anything else; the top is not meant to carry string pressure without the post. Then bring it in.

Summer has the opposite problem: heat and damp soften the glue and swell the wood. Same rule about the car. Wipe the rosin dust off the strings and top with a soft dry cloth after each playing, and don't use furniture polish or anything else on the varnish.

School Rental Instrument Checkups

Every September the school orchestras start up and several hundred rental violins, violas and cellos come out of closets around the county. Most of them are basically sound and a few of them are not playable, and a beginner cannot tell the difference. For $15, while you wait, I will:

Check that the bridge is standing straight and in the right place (a leaning bridge is the most common problem I see, and it will eventually warp or fall);
Check the soundpost is standing and roughly where it should be;
Check the pegs turn and hold, and lubricate them if they don't;
Check the strings for fraying and the string heights at the nut and bridge;
Check the fine tuners, the chinrest, the endpin and the bow (hair, tightening, tip);
Tune it, and show you or your child how to tune it, which takes five minutes and saves a year of frustration;
Tell you honestly whether it needs anything more, and whether that's something the rental company should be fixing under your contract before you pay me to do it.

Most checkups end with a tuning, a pinch of peg compound, and a handshake. Some end with "take this back to the store and ask for a different one." I'd rather you hear that from me in September than from the orchestra teacher in January.

Teachers: if you would like me to come to the school on an evening and look over a whole section's instruments at once, e-mail me; I have done this for two schools in the area and it works well.

Hours and Contact

The workshop is at my home on Orchard Lane, and I see customers by appointment only, weekday afternoons and evenings and Saturday mornings. Appointments are usually available within a day or two. I ask for appointments because I am often in the middle of something that can't be put down, glue in particular, and because it means when you come, I'm ready for you.

E-mail: [email protected] - the best way to reach me. Tell me what the instrument is and what's wrong with it and I'll write back with a time and, if I can, an idea of the cost.
Telephone: (555) 555-0163 - leave a message; I return calls in the evening.

If you are coming from out of town, I'm easy to find, and I will send directions with your appointment. Please bring the instrument in its case, and the bow with it even if the bow isn't the problem; I like to hear the two together.

About Hans
I apprenticed in Germany, where I was born, in a shop that did mostly repair for the music schools, and I have been at a bench ever since: three years there, nine years in a shop in the city, and since 1985 on my own here. I play the viola, not well, in the community orchestra, which is how many of my customers found me and how I found out what a section of school violins sounds like from the inside.

I work alone. When you bring me an instrument, I am the one who works on it and the one who hands it back. I do not rush glue, I do not use the wrong glue, and I do not tell people their instrument needs work it doesn't need. If it is a fifty-dollar violin that needs a hundred dollars of work, I will say so, and we will talk about what's worth doing. That has kept me in business for twenty-six years, and I expect it will keep me for a few more.

Neighbors: Suzuki Violin Parent (one of my customers, and a good writer) | The Community String Quartet | Piano Tuning Explained | Bluebird Guitar Repair & Setup (a colleague in a different trade) | Vienna neighborhood

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