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Projecting sound is an interesting one. Classical violin groups have done experiments which seem to show that some players can project sound farther with the same instrument than others. With...

I think I might be out, but I'm not sure :)

And then there's the common misspelling of 'Mandoline' as 'Mandolin' referring to a vegetable slicer.

That combination of players might indeed work fine for most kinds of music, but socially, folk jams in UK aren't that organised. Everyone just pitches up and plays. As it's usually all or mostly...

Thanks all for the comments and advice above. By the way, a couple of Jill's great clips above have people smiling while playing traditional music - that's great. It's good to see folks obviously...

I've never locked a case. I think the only thing locking a small instrument case guarantees is that someday you'll lock the case and lose the key. Sure, it stops the case falling open, but so does a...

I used to play in tartan jacket and bow tie Scottish dance bands, but in the 70s I played in a longhair flares and cosmic T shirt good time bar band and both worked. I'd go for whatever feels right...

Well Journeybear, what can I say? I felt that constructive comment on your finely wrought panoply of reasoning on this investment was beyond my abilities, that all readers would appreciate the...

Presumably because the nyckelharpa market is not yet big enough? Yet there are workshops producing and Ebaying instruments which are the result of 19thC artistic imagination, like fanciful lyre...

One thing about Eastman matt finishes - they're nice, but if you touch the instrument anywhere those places don't stay matt for long. My 305 has a couple of polished spots on it where I touch it...

I've always found the lack of interest in violins among violinists quite surprising. I can understand a weekend fiddler just liking his fiddle and not being too concerned about the technical details...

What techniques do you use to play such a big fiddle? There's an interesting article here:

https://taborviolas.com/baroque-viola/a-short-history-of-baroque-violas/

...that suggests original...

Interesting- is your 'tenor' violin tuned -8va GDAE? I have a 'chin cello' 5 string 16" viola tuned -8va CGDAE. The C string is a bit 'choked' sounding and hard to get working with the bow (it's OK...

Thanks for all that - I'll have a look at all your recommendations and see what fits. Max

You may also find you get better tone per $ in an A model Eastman or Kentucky in that price range - adding a scroll works out real expensive on the lower end F hole Eastmans.

I'd recommend a better quality Chinese workshop instrument for value for money. BUT, you need to know what you're looking at or have a friend who does - they vary a lot, and some still have very...

I suspect it means that the straight fret tenor guitar is in itself rare enough, but the subset of tenor guitarists interested in messing with the instrument is even rarer. You have the same thing...

Dunno about carbon mandos, but I bought a good quality carbon fiddle some years ago. Either it 'played' in, and the sound did develop like a decent wooden one, or it played me in so I got a better...

Not too bad compared to their mandolin strings :)

I think there may be a parallel here with violin and cello fingering. On violin/mandolin, typical fingering of e.g. a one octave G major scale (using the available open strings) would be 0 1 2 3 0 1...

Lovely - I visited Cas's worshop for a tenor guitar setup when he was building this mandolin, and saw it 'in the white'. I used to own a 5 string CGDAE cello, and I think even a relatively poor...

I just bought my second Harley Benton CLT-20S used, got the first one new from Thomann. I like these little guitars, they're like mini dreadnoughts, the scale length works with 1-2-3-4...

If you're in EU or close (eg UK), at any rate anywhere east of the Pond, I think the cheapest workable way to get a tenor guitar is find a 2nd user Harley Benton tenor acoustic (thomann.de music...

For my Harley Benton tenor today - this is quite weird, its like a tiny Dreadnought but deeper bodied than you might expect. Tried it out in GDAE with the D'Addario OEM strings - meh. Fitted John...

The above are all good solutions - for some kinds of violin/fiddle sound. The problem is, though, you need to identify what kind of sound your fiddler wants before trying a solution.

If she wants...