New violin!

This happened last Saturday. Since I'm kind of short on time (I've been working nearly full time and still have summer homework to finish), I'll just post what I emailed to my private violin teacher and my orchestra director.

We went to Potters, a violin shop in the area. My parents had told the guy that we wanted to move up one price bracket, so that put us in the "Old French/Old German" category. I tried the instruments they set out, and a couple sounded a little nicer than my Doetsch, but I don't think they were buy-worthy. After I was narrowing my choices down to the three I sort-of liked just to see if I would suddenly fall in love with one, a Potters guy came in and, after my parents and I talked with him, that
the French violinmakers (most of the violins on my table were French, and the one German one was one of the first to go) liked making brassy-sounding instruments. When I told him I wanted "sweet and not fuzzy," he told us that Italian violins would be better. Like the one in the display cabinet in my room. When he left and I wasdouble-checking that none of the instruments were perfect, my parents pulled a more expensive instrument off the wall and had me try it. It cost $6500. I liked that instrument's tone better, and the next time the Potters guy came in, we told him about what I had just tried. He
pulled the Italian instrument out of the display case. It was priced at $7000. I liked that one even more, especially when he got me one of the really nice bows to try with it. (That bow was almost a little too ornate for my taste. It had a lot of "bling": a silvery-leaf fleur-de-lis instead of a normal eye on the frog, a non-ebony frog (must have been some kind of bone, but I don't know), etc.) While I tried that out, the Potters guys brought out the next price bracket. The good ones.

I finally narrowed down the more expensive instruments to the Italian one from the display cabinet and a French (! it sounded good!) instrument costing $6200. After listening to S, another Potters guy, play the instruments, I decided that the French violin had less of a brassy tone than the Italian one. Weird. Since I now had about fifteen bows (two price brackets) sitting on the table to choose between, we asked Simon which ones he would suggest I try. He picked out three (of the higher priced ones, of course) and played them each for me, explaining their strengths and tone qualities. I tried them all myself and fell in love with the bow he said was best for spiccatto. I, of course, am a girl—not as strong as a man. I like light bows, even though he said he liked a different bow for overall playing. The spiccatto bow has a beautiful tone. I love it. And it's all personal preference anyway.

Before we left the room to check out, we asked Simon if we would get any credit for turning in my Doetsch instrument and bow. We got $1500 for the Doetsch, but he said that they don't give credit for "nickel bows" and
that the bow I had used with my Doetsch was now my "outdoor bow." He said it with all seriousness, and the new one sounds several gillion times better, especially on my new instrument. But my parents and I still laugh about it. (We didn't laugh to his face, though. And it makes sense; it's just so different than what we all thought before.)

I'm still getting used to the instrument. I kept the same case but get a pleasant surprise each time I open it. I love it. The tone is so much cleaner than my old instrument. I love it, I love it, I love it. That's about all I can think about my violin right now.