Hello,
please could anyone relieve me of some of my considerable ignorance?

I've acquired a second hand violin and bought some new strings for it as one of the old ones broke. It looks to me as though the D string is very slightly wider than the G string. Is this normal? I'd've thought it would be the other way round and I'm wondering if the factory put them in the wrong packets!

I managed to tune it successfully (I think), after quite a lot of time and fiddling. (no pun intended ) Now it's out of tune again after spending 4 days in it's case doing nothing. Again, is this normal?

It's probably a 'cheap and nasty' Chinese violin. It's been unused for years, in fact probably hardly played ever. A friend has lent it to me.

Thanks, obble

I really doubt that the D should be thicker than than the G . Probably a stupid question, but does the D sound lower than the G now that you've put them on?

As for it going out of tune, the pegs have probably slipped. Try rubbing a little chalk onto the pegs before pushing them back in - it should help them to stay in position. The strings won't sound fabulous to begin with, they need to be broken in for a few weeks.

When I bought a brand new Chinese violin and changed the strings, the better quality perlon D string was thicker than the cheap steel G string that had come with the violin. That might be the case with you?

As for needing to re-tune, as Miss Ross has said, it's likely to be due to your pegs slipping - happens more with violins that haven't been used for a while. Chalk is the 'cheap and cheerful' option here.

Enjoy!

Cheap, cheerful, and disastrous in the long term. Chalk is abrasive, so it will make the problem worse.

As I should have said originally - use chalk if you quickly need to sort the problem. There are products out there, but when caught in a situation, chalk is usually the only thing I have to hand. If you use it very sparingly, and not more than once or twice, it shouldn't cause too much, if any damage.

Actually, I should just admit defeat...Sarah probably knows more about it than I do.

When I put new strings on my violin I have to tune the violin virtually every minute or so for a little while then after every time I play for 5 minutes and then a little bit longer, that's because the strings are new and they need to 'stretch a little', once they find their 'comfort zone' they'll stay in tune for at least each practice session (mine stays in tune for a couple of days at least and I play an hour a day).
After a few days if they slip out of tune too easily then it could be that you need to put some peg paste on pegs
Jo

I have found some D strings that are thicker than G strings so I'm sure that this is normal. It would probably snap anyway if you tried to tune it so i'm quite sure the factory has them in the right packets.

As for the slipping, all new strings will take time to settle down so just keep tuning when necessary and you'll find within a few weeks they'll hardly ever need tuned. I very, very rarely tune my violin and sometimes it's sitting for a few months! I found the same with my cello. It used to always be out of tune but now it has kept its tuning quite well.

Wasn't sure earlier whether you had just changed the D string or all the strings

If you changed all the strings at one go, as other people have said, they will need time to settle. However, it might also be worth making sure that the bridge is still aligned as any slippage here can also cause tuning problems; more importantly if it "snaps" suddenly it could cause damage to your violin.

Thank you everyone, that's really informative.

I'm assuming the chalk mentioned is just ordinary blackboard chalk and not some sort of special musical chalk? (i.e. singing, tap-dancing chalk in top hat and tails?)

I did change all the strings at once. The new lot were all bigger than the originals which were very thin in comparison and not wound, just metal.
I think the bridge is still in the right place. I looked up some websites to check.

No, I managed to tune them so that the D was lowest. It didn't seem to be forcing them or stretching too much.

That's reassuring. It's only a tiny difference in width, hardly noticable really.

Seems like I should probably leave the new strings as they are, keep re-tuning and hope it settles down. I don't need it to be right urgently so I won't do the peg paste / chalk option for now.

Thanks again!

My teacher when I was a child used to use it, but then, we were playing on naff 1/4 and 1/2 size Stentors rented from the county, so keeping the pegs nice wasn't a huge issue. Peg paste isn't very expensive, and if my experience of how little of it I have used to stop pegs slipping is anything to go by, it's a wise investment cos it'll last for AGES!

Basically, yes, chalk works in the short term, but it IS abrasive, so it adds to the problem. Use it often enough and it'll wear down the pegs and the holes and you'll get to the stage of having to replace the pegs or redo the holes. I don't claim to be an expert by a LONG way but people I know who "know their stuff" have warned me against it often and logic re the relative abrasiveness/hardness of chalk and wood suggests they're right to suggest caution. (And I think ebony is somewhat harder than the wood used in the pegbox, so if you use it often, it's the box, not the easier to replace peg, that'll come off worse in the fight - not good!)

My experience is that I used it on my full size violin because that is what I remembered my teacher doing as a child. My E peg got so loose it had to be replaced, and I was told that the chalk was basically making the problem worse! I don't remember how much it cost, and my fiddle did have a thorough overhaul at the time too, but it would've been cheaper not to have caused such a problem in the first place, and I was lucky that as I recall it just required the peg replacing and had not caused too much damage to the pegbox.

Hill's peg paste costs less than a fiver, Hidersine's "Hiderpaste" (that's what I've got!) costs £2.60. I'd rather pay that than have to one day pay to have the peg replaced, reamed to the correct size, and potentially have to have the pegbox sorted out if the holes have become too big unless it was a very cheap fiddle in the first place! Certainly, I personally WON'T use it on my instruments, and although I agree that one or two uses if one is desperate probably won't cause long term problems, I would just far rather not use it at all, nor would I recommend it to others. IMO just not worth it when the alternatives work better and don't cause damage (and are so cheap!). Yes, chalk is a possibility for the short term but I just wouldn't like someone to be merrily using it without knowing they were potentially causing problems in the long term