What Brands Are Good?
The following well-written post was seen on Quora.
Here's a secret about the bowed instrument business. Brand names for instruments mean very little. A few importers have been successful at branding their own name, but that still tells nothing of where or how the instrument was made, or how well the setup work was done.
One could think in terms of three general catagories of instrument. There are basic outfits that look something like a violin, but are really just a waste of money. This is the cheap internet special that often reveals itself to be unplayable. Then there are workshop instruments that are reasonably well made either by machine, by hand, or a combination of both. After that we find instruments by individual makers that show clearly who made it.
I’ll share a dirty little trade secret about stringed instruments in today’s market: names mean very little on most of them. They come from usually one of 3 sources: 1) mass production sometimes semi-automated factories (producers of the infamous inexpensive “instrument shaped objects” on the internet), 2) workshops where several fairly-skilled workers work together to produce a somewhat lower volume of instruments utilizing hand assembly and traditional instrument building methods, and 3) individual professional luthiers who produce very high quality instruments by hand at a low volume. Of the 3, only the luthier will identify the instrument with its true origin (his/her shop). The others buy instruments from factories and production shops and label them with their own private trade names. The private names of some distributors and local shops are sometimes an indicator of relative quality level depending on their level of skill in final setup and adjustment and their interest in maintaining a long-term good reputation. For too many, though, the name given to the instrument is just a borrowed name from some old Italian cities that sound glamorous, and is nothing more than window dressing for a sub-standard product.
Here's a secret about the bowed instrument business. Brand names for instruments mean very little. A few importers have been successful at branding their own name, but that still tells nothing of where or how the instrument was made, or how well the setup work was done.
One could think in terms of three general catagories of instrument. There are basic outfits that look something like a violin, but are really just a waste of money. This is the cheap internet special that often reveals itself to be unplayable. Then there are workshop instruments that are reasonably well made either by machine, by hand, or a combination of both. After that we find instruments by individual makers that show clearly who made it.
I’ll share a dirty little trade secret about stringed instruments in today’s market: names mean very little on most of them. They come from usually one of 3 sources: 1) mass production sometimes semi-automated factories (producers of the infamous inexpensive “instrument shaped objects” on the internet), 2) workshops where several fairly-skilled workers work together to produce a somewhat lower volume of instruments utilizing hand assembly and traditional instrument building methods, and 3) individual professional luthiers who produce very high quality instruments by hand at a low volume. Of the 3, only the luthier will identify the instrument with its true origin (his/her shop). The others buy instruments from factories and production shops and label them with their own private trade names. The private names of some distributors and local shops are sometimes an indicator of relative quality level depending on their level of skill in final setup and adjustment and their interest in maintaining a long-term good reputation. For too many, though, the name given to the instrument is just a borrowed name from some old Italian cities that sound glamorous, and is nothing more than window dressing for a sub-standard product.