In the last couple of days, my violin has started buzzing. It is most noticeable when playing open G string. It made a similar sound once before, which turned out to be it vibrating against the buttons on my top, but that's definitely not happening this time. Any ideas what it could be and what to do to solve it?

Thanks,
Sarah

Ah, got it! One of the chinrest screwy things had got loose. The problem seems to be solved for now.

Glad to hear you've got it sorted

just reviving this thread as I just had a 'buzzing experience'.....

violin did not buzz,
violin went for a 'state of the art professional set up'
got it out of case in anticipation on how much more wonderful it would sound.....

violin sounded WORSE than before set up! horrible/scratchy AND with an annoying buzzing/ring to it, quite loud too!!!

I was quite annoyed, thought they 'robbed me', charged me the earth to pretend to set up the violin whilst making it worse instead!

I thought: maybe it's the fine tuner on the E, tried to grip this tight whilst playing, made no difference, it was not loose, it was not rattling....made sure chin-rest would not touch tail piece at all, check! was not that.
Made sure that the tailpiece did not have any screws loose, that end button was not loose, that chinrest metal clamps were not rattling, no no no, none of these things.

Maybe one of the strings is not the right 'height'?? tried to play all notes in all positions....no, it does not seem to be this either...

I gave up, I was going to put violin back in the case as I put it in the case I noticed that they placed a piece of vellum on the bridge under the E-String and that the little plastic tube on E string that once was placed over the bridge, was now just left between the bridge and tailpiece 'wandering around' and thought: could it be this little plastic sleeve on E string actually vibrating and causing ALL THAT RACKET????

I pushed it right back so that it went over the silk thread of the string and it was well jammed over it so it would not move anymore, picked up violin, played: BEAUTIFUL!!!! no buzzing, no scratchy sound nothing awful anymore, it was a WHOLE DIFFERENT VIOLIN!!!

I heard these little plastic covers over E string can cause rattles, but I never imagined in my life how it would TOTALLY transform a violin

The exact same thing happened to mine when the plastic-widget-thingy became dislodged. Before I realised what was going on I thought I was going mad... where was my beautiful, sweet-sounding violin gone???

It makes a horrible racket. Unreal isn't it???

Glad you got it sorted though - its so distracting when you're trying to practice with it.

I always remove the plastic thingy on my strings now, sometimes they make it sound funny even if they are on the bridge. I also noticed in the past that the plastic gets cut through by the string, so what is the point of it?
If you have some vellum under the E string you don't need them