I just don't like those plastic tubes on the strings.  I don't know how much they affect the sound, but I figure they have to mess it up at least a bit.  Besides that, I think they just look crappy.

This is one of those fixes where I messed it up the first time and had to re-do.  I didn't have any actual factual parchment handy, and I'd seen in some places on the net where they said thin leather would work.  So in one of the pics you'll see some thicker stuff glued to the bridge than in the final pics.  

"Experience is what you get when you don't get what you wanted." 

Leather can be sliced very thin, but then it isn't very strong.  I found I had to leave it almost 1mm thick to have something the strings didn't pretty much just cut right through.  Problem with that is it affected the height of the strings, and raising the A string that much made the A, D and G almost level.  Less than 1 mm of difference in height.  That made it very hard to bow the instrument and get anything like a clean note.

So I was stuck looking at it and deciding whether to go back to the tubes, or maybe recut the curve of the bridge to make up for the extra height caused by the leather being too thick.  I ended up doing the sensible thing and calling a musician friend who makes his own small hand drums sometimes and bumming a scrap of nice real goatskin parchment.  He dropped by with a piece he had gotten for a little drum and then decided he didn't like one edge of.  Maybe a 6 inch roughly circle shaped piece.  Maybe only enough for one very small drum, but I'd guess one could probably do 40 or 50 violin bridges with that one piece.  I gave him a return-prezzie of some old small bits of drum hardware I had around.  I'm not a drummer, and don't have a use for it, he is a drummer and it might save him a trip to the music shop sometime. 

Fellow musicians are often your best source for small parts and odd bits you need for a project.  Often they will understand better than anyone else on the planet what it is like to try and get an instrument up and playing or do a cool little mod or upgrade that most non-musician friends wouldn't even notice.

The parchment is very thin and tough.  Considerably less than 1mm thick, and then I sanded the rough side of it with some 600 grit and I'd say by the time I was ready to put it on, it was maybe at most a quarter of a mm thick. 

I cooked up a tiny batch of hide glue and put the parchment on by putting a tiny bit of the hide glue on one end of a strip I'd cut of it, (maybe a little over 2 mm wide), touching it to the back side of the bridge and holding it steady until it "grabbed" well.  Then let it sit for a few minutes to harden some and then put a teeny drop (tiny and teeny here indicate amounts you can apply with the pointy end of a pin) and I pulled the strip tight across the top of the bridge and down across the drop of glue on the front.  Then trimmed the excess parchment off carefully with a razor and scraped off the little bit of excess glue. 

For those getting bored with the long post, I'll just say it seems to have worked quite well.  Other than a slight "settle" of the strings into the parchment, 24 hrs later the strings aren't cutting in at all, and I think those strings sound a bit better without the plastic tubes.

But while I had the violin partway taken down anyway.. I decided to do a little more work.  I re-sanded the bridge feet to make absolutely sure they were a really good fit.  I haven't been 100% happy with the tone of the instrument yet, and I figured I may as well make sure the feet of the bridge were making as close to perfect contact as I could manage.  I scribbled over the part of the feet that touch the top of the violin with pencil, then taped a piece of 600 grit sandpaper on the violin top and used it to sand the feet until the pencil marks were gone.  Then I went a bit further into obsessive and stretched some thin silk over the top and buffed the feet on that for a while.  I checked it in a dark room with a laser, and the fit was light-tight.  If anybody can beat that for picky, I want to hear about it. LOL

Also, while the instrument was partially taken down anyway, I decided to trim and round the ends of the tuning pegs, paint the inside of the pegbox and paint the inside edges of the F-holes.  Those are all really aesthetic/artistic touches, but it is important to like how your instrument looks.  Not saying a violin has to look like a textbook or museum picture.  But it should have a look you personally like.  Beautiful wood and finish, pink with sparkles, black and shiny, whatever.. But if you like how it looks it is just more enticing to play and more enjoyable to handle.  Point of pride.  With cheaper instruments, the detailing will usually be one of the places where the work was done poorly or not at all.  Fixing those little bits up can be part of making it feel and look a bit less cheap.  They won't make a Strad out of a 60$ fiddle, but every little bit adds up.  

  Anyway.. I'm, still not 100% happy with the tone/timbre of the D string.  I'm pretty sure that is going to end up being an issue that will lead me into learning about soundpost adjustment.  I do feel the E and A strings sound better now that the tubes are no longer needed.  While the details of trimming and rounding he ends of the pegs and the little bit of painting are minor touches in my opinion, I like the effect and feel it gave the instrument more of a "finished" look.  I'll put up the sound files in another post, since this one is already long enough with the pics.