After finally settling down for the night and ending my practice (3 hours tonight!) I wanted to share an unforgettable experience from today.

Living in the Detroit Area of Michigan, I've found that coming by a truly good, reasonably priced and trustworthy luthier is a bit of a challenge...Until today.  @fiddlestix and I met up today after I finished up a few hours of work in the area near where he's at.  He kindly offered to let me ride with him up to his Luthier in Flint, MI to have him take a look at my old girl and see what else could be done to her to get her playing the way she should (omit beginner player from the equation lol).  What a great experience it was, not just to meet someone from here on the site in person but to be able to stand there and talk with the Luthier in length about several topics and also find out that my fingerboard needs to be reworked, need a new bridge and sound post, tailpiece (with built in fine tuners) as well as just a general sound adjustment (beyond what I've already paid 2 luthiers to do in the past few months).

 While we were chatting away I had brought up the topic of my warped bow that I did try to straighten a bit myself (to no great avail lol) and how much I was quoted but would have to wait on it till down the road...Low and behold, the Luthier says "Follow me"...Walks to a small room on the side which looked like a workshop you would have seen back in the 1800's with violins hanging around the perimeter and cellos lining the walls, hand tools as far as the eye could see and a bench with 4 various flame lamps.  Right in front of Ken and I he straightened my bow, taking about 8 minutes total while chatting to us the entire time.  He finished up, sighted down the bow and said "so this is what they wanted 85 bucks for eh?  Here ya go, on the house".

We started talking about my violin more and come to find out that it's a bit older than originally anticipated.  Last estimate was an E Martin Sachen Maggini copy, dated at 100-102 years ago.  He took a look at her and said, "This is no Maggini copy...You've got a Saxon Strad Copy, about 125 or so years old...Maybe a bit more actually."  Got down to the actual nuts and bolts of the repair that is being done now and could have done down the road.  For the entire current repair listed earlier (FB, Bridge, SP and TailPiece) with labor came out to 100 even.  To repair the damaged section on the bottom near the end pin he quoted literally 1/3 of what  others in the actual Detroit area had said.  Finally found a great luthier in the area that will be trusted with my old girl for years to come...Here comes the kicker, I asked out of curiosity if he may have a violin that I could rent from him while mine is in the shop having had to turn in the student rental I had until yesterday.  Without skipping a beat, he grabbed one of the dozens of violins off of a string and put it in my case.  Gorgeous looking violin and without saying anything himself, I believe he personally made it...  Pics Below:

Now on to the even cooler part!  The entire trip was started with fiddlestix (Ken) and I chatting the other night about the shop he takes his violins to.  He spoke so highly of him that I had to check out what he meant, to no disappointment!  Riding out to the shop we had a great talk about anything and everything that came to mind about music or anything else really for that matter.  Sharing experiences and trials over the years we've had in the music world and even got in to a bit of music theory talk ha ha.  Listening to the luthier and Ken battle it out at times was beyond amusing, especially when he looked at the bridge and said "Look at this bridge, this is pretty bad...Ken did you make this bridge?  How about this sound post that looks old and worn?" all the while with a giant mischievous grin haha.  Meeting him in person after chatting on so many occasions in the chat box here on the site makes it all the better and the fact that this site is what made it all happen is simply priceless, thank you @Fiddlerman .  Thank you so much Ken for a great experience and for introducing me to a great luthier who truly knows what it's like to live in a 'big city' with 'big prices'.  Hats off to you good sir and until next time I bid you well.  Sadly it slipped my mind to take pictures of the inside of the shop but will take some when I go to pick up my old girl next Monday.  

~Chris (FD)