Cremona SV-100 Premier Novice Violin, 1/32-Size Review

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(More customer reviews)The little violin arrived promptly and in good order. The bridge was down, but it was intentionally packed that way. The sound post was still in place (usually it will be), so it was easy to set the bridge properly and tune the strings. (If the sound post is fallen, this is not a serious problem, but don't try to set it yourself, bring it to a violin repair professional.) The pegs worked well. One cannot expect a great tone from such a tiny instrument, but it is a real, playable violin. I have replaced the tinny Chinese strings with Pirastro's and that improves the sound and volume. No fine tuners were provided with the fiddle so I bought a set of Suzuki tuners from another source (they are very inexpensive) and put them on when I changed the strings. The violin came with a good case, and the bracket inside holds the bow securely.
I had only one problem, and that was with the bow. I rosined it for weeks and it simply would not hold rosin. This meant that it could not grip the strings properly but would slide around and produce only a faint tone. I thought maybe the bowhair was some sort of inferior synthetic; however, when I brought it to my local violin repairman, he assured me it was genuine horsehair, but quite dirty. On that basis, I think I understand what happened, and I will explain it because this problem is likely to be encountered by other parents.
Whether a bow is big or small, new bowhair never holds to the string. It needs rosin, and at the start, lots of it. A repair shop always has powdered rosin on hand, and when run through it, new hair quickly becomes fit for use. But at home you will likely have only a cake of rosin. In fact, the little violin comes with a cake of rosin. When you first open it, take a nail or a pin or an unbent paper clip and scratch the surface of the rosin with about 10 lines, then rosin the bow a lot until it will grip the strings securely. My mistake was that although I did rosin the bow quite a bit at first, it was not enough, and then another factor took over: to understand this, I need to cite another rule, which is that one should never touch the bow hair, because the oil from the skin makes it slip. Well, try explaining this to a very young child. My daughter would frequently pick up the bow by the hair. Perhaps if there had more rosin on it in the first place, the effect of this might not have been quite so severe. But the combination of not enough rosin and the child continually handling the hair had such a bad effect that it would not hold more rosin. Clearly this is not the fault of the Cremona Company.
I don't know if there is a perfect solution, but I suppose the best you can do is (a) make sure the bow is thoroughly rosined before the child ever tries it; and (b) always place the bow in the child's hand at the frog (bow grip), rather than letting her pick it up herself -- to the extent possible, and watch her like a hawk.
Another problem you are likely to encounter with a tiny violin is that the G string (the lowest string) is likely to "wow" (rapid fluctuation in pitch) as much as one full tone whenever you draw the bow across it. This is a physical/acoustical problem, even with strings specifically made for this size violin, and quite disconcerting. My replacements for the original Chinese strings were Pirastro "Piranito" for the upper three, and "Chromcor" for the G. The upper strings now sounded louder and better, but the G still had the bad fluctuation. I have since discovered that Pirastro now makes the "new formula" Tonica strings in 1/16-1/32 size, and I have reason to think they have tried to address this problem. I will report back when I've had a chance to try them.

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