Hello everyone

I hope you can help me with my bow problem. I dropped it the other day (well actually shoulder rest fell off onto bow which then leapt into the air and landed on floor) and ever since it has a very annoying wispy undertone to it. My teacher checked the bow out and couldn't see anything wrong with it but could hear the noise too when he used my bow. It almost sounds like feedback...

What do I do?

To put things in context it's a stentor conservatoire bow which was bought in May and has had about 4 hours use per week since then.

Any ideas gratefully received.

Cheers
Spark

I think it just becuase it is a very cheap bow. Not a lot you can except buy a new bow.

I had one of theose bows once. It was so rubbish I broke it within a month.

Yeah, you have to admit this is the perfect oportunity for some music retail therapy, you can probably get a better bow for relatively little money and you'll probably find it improves your sound a lot too. Bonus!

Forumite Liz at Elida Trading has some reasonably priced bows of decent quality.

Yup, and if you're a bit of stuntman where your bow is concerned, maybe you could consider carbon ?

Several of my friends (some fiddlers, some classical players) use Liz's glasser braided carbon fibre bow and they love it - it sounds great, plays well and during bow trials with them, we didn't find anything under 1500 euro that they liked as much as the glasser (which sells for around 250 euro, I think). One fiddler got one because his old French bow was broken in a session last year (tip got smashed by some drunk in the pub 'dancing' to some reels... wow) - he's much happier with the glasser.

The sound is different from wood, not bad, just different, and the playability is great. You'd have a tough time breaking it too !

Allan

Just to 'second' what Allan said , Liz gave us 7 bows to try, and whilst we bought the most expensive, a German wooden bow, my daughter's second favourite was the carbon fibre 'Glasser' bow.

Thanks for all the replies so far.

So now the question is how much do I spend on a new one? I have no idea what price range my current bow is in because I bought it as an outfit. I can probably spend up to £50 but no more.

And what do you look for in the sort of bow I can afford?

Will look at elida website but don't really know what I'm looking for!

Cheers
Spark

If that's the most you can spend, I would firmly recommend the glasser X series carbon graphite. You won't get anything useable in wood at that price, but the glasser is surprisingly good. Ask Liz to send you one to try, she's very good like that.

But it will be more like £100, possibly more now the £ exchange rate has dropped.

You can get some pretty decent mainland Chinese bows for £20. I was stunned. Also there is someone in Edinburgh who makes £80 bows which are very playable. Shop around as much as possible and don't take lower price as necessarily indicating lower quality.