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ok, I've been a violin owner now for over 50 years, I just never picked it up to learn how to seriously start to play until 5 months ago. I've been wanting to learn for decades and always had "life" get in the way of learning, until now.
The first tune I learned (completely by ear) was "over the rainbow" since I loved the movie, The Wizard of Oz and watch it every year with each of my 3 kids as they growed up. Now I can play it for myself...and I'm starting to learn how to read music as well, all thanks to FM and his 'free' videos. Thank you.
Here's a couple of pics of my 'baby' which I just recently had repaired after laying around in the rafters for all those years... and which I spent the better part of 4 days cleaning and polishing to the condition you see here. It sounds incredible, way better than the Chinese model I've been kicking around.
"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein
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That's a fine looking fiddle. Any chance we could hear your "baby" sing?
Welcome to the forum!
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I will attempt to upload a short mp3 of it tomorrow... I'm getting some newer synthetic core strings and hope it gives it a little more volume.
I'm taking it back to the luthier so he can see how well I complimented his efforts in repair.
Thanks for the 'welcome', I hope to be a member for quite awhile. I'm on the "String Academy" forum and have learned a lot from Steve and the group over there... but they are mostly into classical style.
"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein
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That's exciting. I'll have to check back tomorrow, then.
Isn't it fun to see an instrument needing a little TLC become playable again? Mine was the same way.
Beautiful Violin and Welcome to the forum! I am looking forward to hearing it!
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Looks great. Sounds like fun. Look forward to hearing it. 
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
I might be the only one here that got excited seeing the before picture. That is what a lot of the violins I buy look like when I buy them. That was great work cleaning it up and keeping the original finish.
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I think it's pretty exciting, too! What all had to be done to get back in order? I see the tailpiece and chin rest are new. Can't wait to hear how it sounds!
Hi, cdennyb! Welcome to the site =)
Beautiful violin! You've done a great job =) curious to hear it (not an original wish....LOL)!!
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Kevin M. said
I might be the only one here that got excited seeing the before picture. That is what a lot of the violins I buy look like when I buy them. That was great work cleaning it up and keeping the original finish.
The before pictures are always fun to look at. 
(I regret that we didn't take any pictures of my fiddle before the restoration.)
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Ok, it's very late (or early) and I'm very tired so here's a quik update.
I went to the luthiers' shop late this afternoon and was ready to get my strings installed, but he didn't have the one's I was most interested in, my #2 choice were more expensive (by a lot) than what I can buy them for here. Bottom line, I didn't get any strings. I'll have to order some when I get up in the morning.
He suggested I work on a new bridge since the one I had (The original one) was a little too tall and the strings were about a millimeter too far away from the fingerboard. I now have a new one to carve and fit properly. The height will be different for either steel core or synthetic core strings.
Sorry to disappoint but I didn't make any recordings yet.
It was asked what all repairs wer done to the violin. Here's a partial list as I remember.
1- re-glued the front and back after pulling the side wood back up square.
2- repaired several 'scrubbed' patches of bare wood where the varnish was gone.
3- fingerboard sanded flat, template used to confirm and maintain the curvature radius and width full length.
4- 2 pegs replaced because they were split and probably would not have held up.
5- New tailpiece installed with tuners.
6- Original bow has NOT been restored, instead I' using a cheap one that came with my Chinese violin from years ago.
7- Sound post was slightly shaped to fit more properly, length was not correct after the re-glue was done.
8- A new case was obtained since the old coffin box style case provided little if any protection and had non-operational latches.
9- And last but not least, new steel core strings (Some cheap ones I had laying around) were installed for the preliminary testing.
More to come... stay tuned.
DB
"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein
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OK, just got in from work, it's almost midnight here so I'll just post this short mp3 of my favorite tune...
Keep in mind, these are cheap steel core chinese strings (waiting for my good ones to come in the mail) that I had extra. This might be a good test to see how it sounds with these and with the synthetic core ones yet to come.
Also, please be gentle, I know there's a couple of notes there that are just slightly off key but I don't use a strip crutch on the fingerboard so I have to do this the hard way. Also, I have a broken little finger so I can only use 3 fingers on my left hand.
Also, my computer laptop has a very poor sound recording quality about it. I even went out and bought a new $15 mic to see if that would improve the quality, well it did a little I guess but I almost didn't upload this because I knew it recorded far worse than it sounded in person.
Now that I've made all the excuses I can think of...
oh wait... how do you embed an audio recording? I looked all over this forum and can't find a single instruction or example of how or what to do... where did I miss it?
"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein
You should be able to upload MP3 using the UPLOAD ATTACHMENTS box on lower left when you write a new post.
I'm not sure you can UPLOAD by editing an existing post.
Try a new post.
PS I think you have some excellent excuses worked out for a beginner 
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OK Mr. Oliver... I'll give that a whirl.
I tried to do that with the last post but it just posted it without the attachment. Weird... Oh well, if it can happen, it happens to me. Thanks for the info. Here goes nothin.
OK... this is crap I give up.. I waited like a minute to upload a 400K sound file and after hitting the "start upload" nothing happened. Clicking the "upload attachment" still nothing after a minute. I give up.
You guys are saved from the miserable sounds of a cat screeching.
"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein
did you see a button with "Add File" +" or something like that ?
To find file ???
Can you PM me the file and I will post it ???
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@ Mr. Oliver... yes I did see those items, this isnt my first rodeo with these computers and uploading, it's just that this board is a little more difficult than most I'm using.
FM gave me some tips, lets see if they work. I now have 2 mp3. The first was just a recording. I then took it upon myself to complete the work I had started. I cut a new bridge since the old one was too tall for the strings I'm getting. I also had to make a new soundpost. The old one was hand carved with a pocket knife I think so I got a dowel from my shop (a nice straight grained piece of spruce) and proceeded to cut to fit and place carefully with my own post setting tool. Turned out ok, had to fight it for a few minutes but it finally gave up and fell into place. From there on it was just tighten strings and play.
OK, here's an update on browsers. I've been using Opera to browse so guessing there's an issue with maybe their interpretation of the Flash Runtime environment, I've switched over to my Windows Browser to see if there's a compatibility issue.
Aren't computers fun?
Here goes.
It didnt work either... sorry.
"If you practice with your hands you must practice all day. Practice with your mind and you can accomplish the same amount in minutes." Nathan Milstein
Wow. I really can't imagine what is going wrong.
Usually, if I can do it then anyone can.
However, all is not lost. This incident gives you a powerful new excuse
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OK,
cdennyb - I found your files that were successfully uploaded. The next step is to embed them here. I don't know why they don't embed by themselves but I can easily do it since I have the addresses.
OTR - Steel Core Strings
OTR - New Sound-post and Bridge
Thanks for the post, sorry about the inconvenience. 
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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