hello fellow fiddlers!

lefty by nature, I am an abomination to all things strings by having the good fortune to be left handed! :))

My real name is kevin farrell, I am s/e of manchester england, and 57yrs young.

I have been playing guitar and writing songs for 40 of those years, currently gigging regularly and lovin it.

My technical and theoretical musical skills are pretty basic, I get by on enthusiasm! Lolol

Anyway, to the violin..... 

I did some studio work for someone last year who offered me a violin in payment. It was with bow and case and was one of those starter bundles you can pick up or peanuts...(I later discovered the nut was made of chipboard! I kid you not!!) I think that was the first time I had ever touched one! I said yes thinking the bow might be fun on the guitar... I then wondered if it could be made into a lefty...

Of course you can't do that without seriously major surgery, so I just swapped the strings round, made an ebony nut (the only real wood on it!) from an old piano key, took a sledgehammer to the bridge and hey presto.... It functioned!!

I then went through hell trying to play the damn thing! Never has an instrument so utterly bamboozled and grounded me. Something, somehow, during those first impossible, ridiculous, screeching, scratching noteless weeks, took hold. There was a promise, a tiny distant hint that made me want to find what was within. Badly.

So bad was the bite, I found a REAL lefty violin, made of REAL wood!

Now, about six months on! I have a few simple tunes I can play badly, but the promise is now yelling at me to find it!

I am LOVIN it!!!