(Long post warning, with nothing exciting to hear about.  Get yourself a coffee or whatever for this one, if you decide to read it.)

Maintenance is one of those little things of music. It doesn't make an earth-shaking difference in your sound, but I can say from experience that it is one of those things that will trip you up eventually in performance if you neglect it.

Some fiddlers/violinists take their instrument to a luthier once or twice a year to have it checked over, from what I hear.  Not having any luthiers that I know of nearby, and being a "do it yourself" sort of player, I do my own. 

Last night, I had some quiet hours on my hands and decided it was a good time to check over my acoustic.  Anyone looking for a "horror story" can skip the rest of this post, since everything was in pretty good shape.  No disasters.  I just gave the instrument a more thorough cleaning than usual, checked over all the problem spots I could think of, and attended to some little things I had been meaning to get around to.

So this isn't a story of some big dramatic repair or something, just an explanation of what I did that may give some ideas to newer players on how they might go about doing a bit of simple check-up and maintenance on their instrument.

First thing was to look over the instrument closely, with some magnification.  I was looking for any cracks or signs of seams starting to come loose, for signs of strings digging into the nut or bridge, all the things where "a stitch in time saves nine."  Happily, everything looks to be in good shape. 

Next was to take a soft cotton cloth and give the instrument a very thorough cleaning.  I usually wipe down my acoustic violin every day, after playing, so it wasn't bad.  But there's places like under the fingerboard and under the tailpiece and chinrest that don't get cleaned spotless every day, because they are a little harder to get to.  I took the chinrest off, to make that easier.  I noticed that the cork padding on the chinrest wasn't actually very cushy anymore, so I scraped it off with a knife and put on new cork.  When cork gets hard as wood, then it isn't doing the job of padding/cushioning that it is supposed to.

I decided I may as well clean the inside as well. So I put about a half cup of uncooked white rice in through the F-holes and tipped the violin around to let the rice scrub out any dust and etc.  After gently shaking it back out through the F-holes I could see there was a bit of dust and a few cat hairs, but like the outside, it wasn't anything real bad.

Next there were a couple of small issues I wanted to attend to, that most folks probably wouldn't.  So I loosened the strings, took down the bridge, and took the strings and tailpiece completely off.  One of the only annoyances about my acoustic that I have had in the year and a half I have owned it is that the nut wasn't done *quite* as well as I would like.  Height and the string grooves are done well enough, so it has always been very functional, but the edge of the nut on S string side wasn't nicely rounded like it was on the G string side. Just one of those tiny annoyances one notices once in a while when playing.  So I masked the area with some blue painter's masking tape to protect the finish of the violin and took a few minutes with a fine file to round and dress that edge so it was more to my liking.

Next, I put the strings, bridge and tailpiece back on and adjusted the afterlength.  That is an adjustment that is kinda controversial.  Some folks say it makes no difference.  I'll agree with them so far as that I would say that the part of the string that is between the nut and bridge that does the main job of vibrating is 95% of the sound.  There are some discussions on this forum about afterlength, so i won't go into great detail here. I had noticed it was a little off, and I spent some time doing the "check/loosen strings/remove tailpiece/adjust/put tailpiece back on/tune back up/check/repeat" routine until I was happy with it again.  I think the average beginner would be better off just skipping that, but I'm a fussy sort about such things.  Sometimes when I'm playing, I want to feel like that 5% is definitely there.  LOL

Then I cleaned the strings carefully and gave them a close inspection.  Most of the strings are still fine, it's a Pro Arte set a few months old.  But I'd noticed the E string has been a bit dead, so I replaced it with a new plain E that I had left over from a set of Overture Ultras (they come with two E strings to give a choice between wound and unwound for your E).  I took the time to get the wind onto the pegs nice and pretty, and to trim the lengths of the strings so that when the strings are tuned up, the pegs are at least close to where "the pros" want them for doing that left-handed tuning thing.

I don't care for cleaning strings, especially synthetic core ones, with alcohol. So I just used a beechwood stick (a "popsicle stick", in other words) and a cotton cloth to get any rosin residue off them that might have built up on the underside of the strings. 

I had noticed the back of the neck had gotten glossy from playing.  Players differ on that point, but I prefer it matte, so I masked the neck to protect the finish on the rest of the violin and took some #600 sandpaper to it for a few strokes to kill the shine.

Some graphite on the grooves of the nut and bridge, and then I checked over set-up and put the violin into perfect tune.  Finally I gave the instrument a good buffing with a bit of silk cloth, put the chinrest back on, and decided it was a good job.  Vacuumed out the case (how much sense would it make to clean an instrument and then put it back into a dirty case?), rehydrated the humidifier and it was all done.

End result.. No sign of problems developing with the instrument, and it looks and sounds at *least* as good as it did the day I got it brand new.  I think it actually sounds and looks a little better, personally.  There would be a couple reasons for that.  First, better strings and some "playing in" can make an instrument sound better than when it was brand new.  Second, buffing the finish of even an inexpensive violin with silk can get a better look than "factory new".

No grand improvement in sound or appearance.  Well, other than a fresh E string definitely restoring some of the brightness that had been lost as the old one had gone a bit dead.  But when I take her out of her case to play, I know the instrument is as "stage ready" as it can be, and looks it's best.