The violin is known to have the widest price range amongst all musical instruments. Just want to find out which is the most common price range of violin that people have.

If you bought your violin in other currencies, do a rough conversion to US dollars.

two people here had more than a million dollars to spend on a violin???!!!!!!

Perhaps Maxim's started reading the site

Just out of interest, why are the prices in US dollars? This site is based in Britain, as are most of its contributors....

If theyre that well off how would they like to buy me a stradivarius?lol.They were probably messing, i suppose.....

I bought my violin with bow and case for 99 euro a good while back.Will start saving for another soon, bult it'll be ages before I can get it...

i brought mine for £1000 !

mine is a gift from my ex-violin teacher. It has a long history

Wow.... envy them able to spend more than a million on the violin.

Perhaps, who knows.

You're probably right, it's hard to believe that there is such a high percentage of respondents in this poll owning a violin over a million US dollars.

Actually, i wouldn't mind paying a couple of hundred dollars just to get a chance to play on a real Strad for 10 minutes.

I think mine cost between $100-500 USD.

It's just got silly now - pity.

Liz

Actually I was thinking that you have a wide range of Gliga violins in stock and wouldn't know which one to quote the price of

i'll be happy to sell you a Gliga for a million dollars if you want

Liz

Before or after writing 'Stradivarius was Here' inside it with a biro?

With the exception of orchestral leaders (concert masters in the US) who might purchase or perhaps borrow a Strad, a professional string sectional player might spend anything from £8k to £20k on a violin, depending on its age, maker etc.

Most of the time loans have to be taken out to enable this - very few professional musicians earn enough money to cough up the cash straight from their bank account.

If I may ask you a question: I know it's entirely subjective, but would you say there's a point where once one has spent a certain amount the law of diminishing returns kicks in? At one end of the scale, £50 violins are pretty dire; £200 violins sound, to me, noticeably less rich than £500 violins; £1000 violins are fabulous. Above that, though, I'm hard pushed to tell much of a difference. Granted, I'm a pretty crummy violinist which is why I thought I'd ask your opinion since you clearly are not

Incidentally, I'm up for a virtual piano trio if you're interested and we can nobble a cellist

Oooh Shostakovich no 2 pleeezzzz (but you do need a good cellist)

Performing rights If only there was an exception for those doing it just for fun, not to try and make money out of it....

Yes, there is a noticeable difference in general (more expensive violins will have a much smoother and warmer tone), but, at the risk of sounding bigheaded here (which is something I'm not), the big difference comes if you have the skill to play in the really high positions. On the G string for example, on a violin costing say £2000, the tone becomes woolly and even quite rough sounding beyond 6th position. On the E string the instrument sounds tinny/thin and fails to sing once you get past 6th position. The A and D strings also sound woolly and the tone loses definition once past 5th position.

This is why instruments are in effect 'graded' as to their suitability for use by a particular level of player. Hence the higher the price the more suited the instrument becomes for advanced players who will be asking much more of the violin, and will also be far more discerning as far as tonal quality and tonal colour is concerned. It is however, possible to find the occasional instrument that sounds perfectly adequate (especially some of the new hand-made instruments by individual luthiers - Chris and Elspeth Rowe are two names that come to mind) at a lower price than you might expect, but in general, "you gets what you pay for".

Don't worry, you don't sound bigheaded, there's nothing wrong with being good at playing an instrument


OK, so given the highest I've gone is a 3-octave G major scale and my bowing technique is frankly appauling that would explain why I haven't noticed This in hand, I'll save my money for as expensive a piano as I can reasonably afford, instead....

Thanks for the information.

While my piano playing is...errr, yeah well,...so I guess something for about £200 would do me on that front

Ok Tchaikovsky then???

The higher your skill level is in the violin, the more discerning you would be in discrminating between very expensive violins and even more expensive ones.

I think that the violin is simply amazing in the sense that such a small and apparently worthless little "wooden box" with strings attached can command up to even USD $3 million.

Before i learnt the violin, i read an article about a father who sold off his appartment, just to buy a $500,000 dollar violin for his teenage son who is an upcoming virtuoso. I thought it was ridiculous of the father to do that. But now, after learning the violin for some time, i begin to understand how important a good violin is for the development of a child prodigy. Of course, some violins are expensive because of their antique value besides its sound quality.

Hi G,
You can play on a Strad even if you are not some famous person. My daughter told me her teacher got a chance to play on one! You just need to teach in a place like RAM or RCM. Not a big deal honestly as I know you are pretty ambitious.

It's insidiously unjust! I'm told that soloists, (woodwinds, not sure about brass) in the London orchestras have new, expensive instruments thrust into their hands just so the manufacturer can say "he/she's using a xxxxxxxx instrument". It's probably no different elsewhere.