Just wondering if anyone knew the correct way to clean a violin?

I have been using furniture polish but i was wondering if there was something of better quailty, specifically designed for strings?

Anyone

If not ill stick to my polish

I often wonder that myself, so I'm glad someone asked .

I was advised to use perfume to clean the strings themselves and it works a treat, you just have to make sure to protect the wood beneath so that the varnish isn't spoiled.

I was told by my luthier that if you are 'good' and clean your violin after each playing session with a soft clean cloth to wipe off all your rosin from strings/body/etc then you should hardly ever need to do anything else. If you do have to 'polish it' then they sell special violin polish at music shops and I personally would not dare using anything else just in case. I bough a 'violin polish' back in january but have not had to use it yet as the wipe with the clean cloth ritual after playing has been all I needed so far (7 months in).
Strings can be cleaned with a special string cleaner but I would not waste my money on this as all it is is 'pure alcohol' (not the drinking type ), perfume might do the trick as it has a very high alcohol content (and smells nice) but yes, be careful not to drop any of it on fingerboard or body of violin! (in a nutshell I would not bother, I just clean my strings with a cloth and change them at least yearly, maybe 6 months in future if I play more than I do now, I have had mine for 7 months on violin now).

Best thing is a clean dry duster. Use it as regularly as you can, preferably brush off any rosin dust from the varnish under the strings and from the fingerboard after every time you play it. It is best to try and hold a violin mostly from the neck rather than the body if possible.

If you have a build up of rosin under the strings I think there is special cleaner available to get some of it off. I would stay away from furniture polish.

Stop!! Please. Before it's too late. Never use anything on your fiddle except a purpose made polish and even then you're only suppose to use it very sparingly and seldom - once a year say. Furiture polish will ruin the resonance by clogging up the wood.

I would say stop using furniture polish too! It could make things worse for the wood, it's not the same as furniture.

Yes, normally a dry cloth is good enough. You could get a small thin one like the one for cleaning spectacles and glide it under the strings to remove rosin. Then hold the neck of the violin but turn it upside down, pinch each string and wipe off the rosin on the strings. Then wash and dry it really well before your next cleaning. That's what I do. I have two pieces of cloth to rotate in case one doesn't dry in time. In any case, these kinds of cloth dry faster than any other kind and they clean really well

Violin-Ann,
I never thought about washing the cloth after every clean, but it makes some sense to me, after cleaning up the rosin you will have residues of this on the cloth and if you then used the cloth to clean the violin again then you are wiping old rosin residues on the violin? is that why you wash them after every use?
it makes me cringe actually that I haven't washed my cloth at all in 7 months!!!

Oh yes, it doesn't make sense to wipe the rosin into the violin again after just cleaning it off.
Not to worry, I'm sure lots of people did what you did, and I'm just a very fussy person who got it off from mom, who says feather dusters are awful because they just spread the dust back again all over the house instead of removing it. Well, I can see her point of view now, but it sure was annoying when I was trying to skiv off cleaning when I was younger.

Hidersine do a very good violin polish that (with some elbow grease!) got rid of years of accumulated dirt and rosin (not all mine!) from my fiddle beautifully.

Yes, I think it's best to avoid using any polish on a violin, including purpose-made ones. They can interact chemically with the varnish, to some degree, and maybe compromise the tone of your violin.

A build up of dirt or rosin will also compromise the tone of the violin, so in some cases a good clean is definitely worth it.

Why would anyone think that a small wooden object that is (we hope) handled carefully and not subjected to heavy wear and tear would need to be cleaned with furniture (or any) polish on a regular basis.

It's common sense. Furniture polish is for furniture that IS subejcted to heavy wear and tear and needs regular cleaning because it gets dirty and scratched easily.

I've had my violin for 3 months now: I wipe the body and strings with a soft cloth after use and it's fine. It doesn't exactly lie around the house getting trashed ..... ergo it deosn't need much cleaning, for now anyway.

I imagine my teacher will tell me if it ever needs a clean.

Didn't your teacher tell you how you should care for your instrument?

Ha! You'll be surprised Quincy. I've had students coming to me with like years of rosin covering the fingerboard area, I wonder the teacher didn't even comment. It must be have been accumulating since the day they started learning the violin. Worse still, the fine tuners were placed wrongly. On the strings above the holes on the tailpiece! Although I'm a fresh teacher, still I'm horrified to see this.

Maybe I was a bit harsh: but it just seems like common sense to me.

It would never cross my mind to regularly clean an object which spends 23 hours a day lying in a well padded, clean case.

It is not getting dirty enough to warrant regluar cleaning other than a quick wipe down.

It just feels like common sense to know not to use furniture polish too.

I know, it seems like common sense to me too, when I see a layer of rosin on the bowing area to get it wiped or at least dusted off. But surprisingly, there are people, even teachers, who do not even comment on it. Which makes me wonder what are they so busy thinking about to not see it. I make it a point to teach students to wipe off the rosin in their first lesson, so that they will not need to be told later on that; sorry, their rosin build-up is just so abominable, that I can't do anything about it, maybe it's time to get a new violin.

Haha, I know I'm being a bit harsh too. But it's important to clean the violin! Not just the sound, but it'll ruin the varnish on that part of the violin too.

Yeah, a build up of rosin can be nasty!

It doesn't take much for a bit of rosin and dirt to start building up. Especially if you have an older fiddle which may not always have been perfectly cleaned in the past (Mine's a little over 100 years old, for example). I was slightly horrified by the crud that came off my fiddle with the (specialised violin!) polish - but it shone up beautifully and it has really given it a new lease of life. I can't imagine what all the accumulated muck was doing to the poor instrument, but a bit of elbow grease brought it up like new, and I didn't realise at ALL how mucky it was till I compared how it looked afterward.

It's actually quite hard sometimes to get all the rosin etc off on hard to reach places - under the fingerboard, between the feet of the violin. It was tricky even with the polish loosening it all up. It was definitely worth the effort though.

Put it in the dishwasher!

In which case it would be hello cello....bye bye violin...

Urgh!

Oh poor violin! Kind of reminds me of the story where the little girl gave her pet fish a bubble bath.

Anyway, yes, well, the teacher who put the fine tuners on the strings is about 80, and I heard he still sent a student in for an exam recently.

Oh no - and that's just reminded me of how me and my friend tried to wash a frog! I'd hoped never to be reminded of it again. We thought we were being kind! Is that an excuse for childish stupidity - I hope so.

I guess he just croaked...

i put my flute and cello bow (when i played cello) in the dishwasher - didnt do it any harm. although i wouldnt reccomend doing it with a violin

Violincjj:-

Oh really hello_cello, it must have been a carbon fibre bow, I've never heard of anyone washing wooden furniture and getting away with it. Does the hair like dishwashers as well? I bet the cheaper bows will start peeling after a wash.

I went to a concert recently where the outside temperature was close to 40°C, and the concert hall was not air conditioned. The audience were fine because we most of us had little paper fans, however the musicians (piano and cello duet) were suffering somewhat.

The cellist had a soft cloth that he would use to wipe his brow between pieces. I was quite amused to note that he wiped his brow, then used the same part of the same cloth to wipe his strings!

Nope it was a nice wood bow



*NOTE* i was joking