Hey all - interesting story how I ended up at Fiddlerman.com.

I have a 12 year old daughter who has expressed a desire for many years to learn how to play violin. Living in a rural area, we'd have to drive at least 45 minutes to get her to lessons, on top of all her other activities.

However, we've recently had an accomplished musician begin working at our local school. And to our surprise, she offered free violin or viola lessons to any child who wanted them during lunch breaks. Well sign us up!

So in researching violins, I heard much of the "if it's not $500 then it's a vso" comments. I also spent a stupid amount of time prowling music stores, looking at violins from $300-$1000. As a guitar player (albeit a poor one) I could not believe what stores wanted versus what the customer got. Really, I wasn't impressed with the quality of many of the instruments I looked at.

Then I find Fiddlerman on YouTube, playing a $100 Cecilio violin (painted, no less!) and making it sound, well, good.

So after viewing even more videos, we now have a Mendini MV650 coming for my daughter (it's all about the wood), plus some synthetic core strings, and some proper rosin.

And at the age of 42, I decided that I should learn violin, and ordered (with the little cash I had left - wow, who marks up this stuff?) my own budget violin (won't share the brand and price....yet) because I've always wanted to learn.

So here I am, and I'm looking forward to get to meet others in the community here.

And although I like heavy metal, and power metal, I believe J.S. Bach channels the voice of God in the music he wrote.