At the moment I've got a plastic tailpiece with four inbuilt adjusters on my violin. Its ok but my teacher has said that I'd get a lot more out of my instrument if I got a normal tailpiece and adjuster. I've had experience fitting tailpieces before on violins and am quite confident about doing it. I'm planning to go out tomorrow to buy a new tailpiece and I'm going to fit it in the afternoon - does anyone know the approximate price for one?

I've looked on the internet and they seem to be cheaper than the plastic ones? I'm thinking about getting an ebony one to match my pegs, and gold adjusted (for my E string) to compliment the rich tone of my violin. At the moment I've got a beautiful old violin (1840-German) and want something that will look the part as well as help to produce the sound that my violin is capable of. I'm going to hopefully fit a set of strings on it too Evah Pirazzi (G-D-A), Pirastro Gold E so that I can get a lot more out of it than from my set of Dominants. Do you think doing this will vastly improve the sound of my violin? It's beautiful in tone but its lacking that certain something that I can't put my finger on.

I recently bought and fitted a new tailpiece to my viola. I think it cost about £20, but there are cheaper ones available, and a violin one won't cost as much anyway.

After changing the tailpiece my viola became more resonant but I have a feeling that might have had been because the tailgut (made of gut) on my old one was starting to fray, but it could also be because the combined weight of tailpiece and adjusters on the new one is much less than the old one.

I changed from Dominants to Evah Pirazzi strings on my viola about a year ago. The Evahs sound so much better and are much more responsive. You probably already know that the Evahs are quite high tension strings, so they may or may not suit your instrument. You just have to try changing things one at a time to see what works and what doesn't work on your instrument.