Completed June 2021
Since it takes about a month to build a violin (about 200 hours), I have plenty of time to think of names while I work. So one might think I’d come up with something more dignified. But soon before I started building this one, I started formal violin playing lessons. The first song I learned was, “I’m-A-Little-Monkey!”
Monkey, along with several of my others violins, has been fitted with mechanical fine-tune pegs. Instead of a simple wooden peg stuck in a tapered peg hole, a mechanical peg is a carbon-fiber shell around an ingenious set of gears that allow the peg head to be turned eight times for one spin of the shaft. This makes it infinitely easier to tune the strings properly and quickly. There are lots of good reasons for using fine-tune pegs, and lots of good reasons to stop using traditional pegs. But the ability to tune without fine tuners is a hard-learned skill that accomplished violinist are proud of. For many of these players, fine tuners are for beginners and sissies. I know I’m at least one of those.
