How much should I be spending on a viola?

College Majors Music Major
1

<p>I am feeling a little flustered here. It sounds like I need to be spending $10,000+. I guess we can squeeze it out, but it will be a hardship for us. Basically, it will have to come out of the money we saved for her college, so she better get good scholarships if we do this. </p>

<p>My husband keeps asking why we need to spend this much money for her instrument, before she ever even gets in. Our daughter keeps telling us she won't have a chance at getting in, if she does not have a "conservatory grade" instrument. </p>

<p>Help!</p>

2

<p>Let’s not forget another $5,000 for the bow! But seriously - the best instrument in the world won’t get someone in who doesn’t have the talent… But a bad instrument can keep them out if it is really bad. How is the quality of what she has now? What does her teacher say? Can she borrow a better instrument and/or bow for her auditions? My own daughter has been concertmaster at Carnegie Hall for her youth orchestra on her $5,000 violin and $1,000 bow. Her teacher has said she could borrow her bow for auditions. </p>

<p>Perhaps you live near a college that has a music program, and someone there could listen to her play and advise you.</p>

3

<p>Hi! I have 2 children who play the cello. We bought a new cello for my daughter 2 years ago, she is a junior in high school now. $10,000 seems to be the number that is thrown around as the starting point price for getting a decent instrument. When we bought her cello we were able to spend up to $7000. We are lucky to have a really good string instrument shop about an hour away from us with a reputable luthier so we called them and set up an appointment and they pulled about 10 cellos in our price range. She played them all over several hours and picked 2 that she liked the best, one for $4000 and one for $7000. To make a long story short she eventually picked the $4000 cello and has been really happy with it. It has a great sound. In the interest of full disclosure she is not planning on a career in music, but if she was I would have no problem sending her to auditions with this instrument. I think in general you are going to get a better instrument if you spend more money, but instruments are quirky and sometimes a lower priced instrument will sound better than one that is higher priced. Do you have a good shop anywhere near you? A reputable shop should be able to pull several instruments in a price range for you to try in one appointment and will probably let you take 2 or more home to try for an extended time and show to your D’s teacher. I seem to remember other posts from people who have found lower priced, but surprisingly good instruments for their children.</p>

4

<p>There’s always a “better,” more expensive instrument out there somewhere! Obviously, you want to invest as much as you comfortably can in a good instrument, but there’s no need to go overboard. D3 once won a concerto competition on a cheap factory-made 14 inch viola. (The committee did require that she upgrade before the performance!) I would guess that admissions committees can “hear around” the quality of the instrument, but it would probably be best to have something that won’t distract their attention from her playing.</p>

<p>In terms of borrowing an instrument (or even a bow) for auditions, if you go that route, make sure the student has sufficient time to adjust to the differences. Especially with violas, each instrument has subtle variations that could trip up someone who is not very familiar with it, especially in an audition situation.</p>

5

<p>lmkh70 </p>

<p>I understand completely what you are going through. We took the plunge on a professional instrument ($18K) for my kid about 15 months ago in the spring of junior year and though a financial hardship for us it was worth the investment. Though not a string instrument it took months to find the right combination of head and body. If you have the time start shopping now and ask around too - you never know who may be selling what around the corner. It’s not a bad idea to consider used as well.
If you dig through a lot of the threads here you can learn that the average scholarships round out to about 15K per year for the top students. My kids playing has soared since this purchase. We do not think the playing would be where it is at without it. There are of course no guarantees with the audition rounds, but we of course are hoping the investment pays off.<br>
If it’s any consolation we know a HS senior on the music performance track that is playing a cello worth 87K. This young lady is very fortunate since it was loaned to her indefinitely by a wealthy gentlemen that no longer plays.</p>

<p>Good luck.</p>

6

<p>As we have learned, there is not necessarily a direct correlation between price and sound quality. We purchased a viola for our daughter from a relatively unknown luthier in the DFW area. Her instrument compared favorably to much more expensive instruments that she played at shops in Chicago and NYC. We paid considerably less that $10K. I had been concerned that we would need to upgrade her instrument prior to starting college. Fortunately, she has told me that she has received compliments about her viola from students and teachers at some of the better conservatories whom she has met during various summer workshops.</p>

<p>PM me if you are interested in the name of the luthier.</p>

7

<p>Here’s another vote for not blowing the budget. My daughter was accepted to major conservatory programs after auditioning on a $5000 cello ($400 bow). That’s not to say that her cello sounded like a typical $5K cello - it doesn’t. (Cellos that sounded better than the one she chose seemed to go for about $20K. We were very happy to have happened on that cello.) It helps to have luck, time and the help of a teacher.</p>

8

<p>Remember that when trying instruments in shops you may not be able to get a full assessment of the instrument’s qualities (and it may compare unfavorably to the one you are used to playing) for a number of reasons including:</p>

<ol>
<li>When you’re not used to an instrument, you don’t know how to draw out the best sound. It takes a while to “break in” to playing on any given instrument. That’s why shops allow you take instruments home for a trial period.</li>
<li>If an instrument has not been played for a while it “goes to sleep.” Another reason you will be encouraged to take an instrument home and play it for a week or two before making a final decision. </li>
<li>If you’ve been playing on a less refined instrument, it could take a while to develop the ear/instinct for the nuance you will be able to get out of a better instrument. It’s part of the learning curve and it’s why it is really essential to involve your teacher in these decisions. It is really difficult to cross over to the next level of instrument without a more seasoned pair of ears to help guide the transition. </li>
</ol>

<p>There will come a point at which an instrument can take you no further, and your teacher (I hope) will be able to help you recognize this point. My own daughter went from a fractional instrument to a luthier-made 2004 violin when she was 13. It’s a very good fiddle for what it is, but she was feeling held back and managed to be able to borrow a much finer old Italian instrument, which she now uses. She still uses the 2004 fiddle for international travel and back up, but the differences in refinement are notable. She is taking secondary viola lessons this year on a $1200 Chinese instrument and, well, there is not a lot she can do with it. Looks like we’ll soon be in the same viola boat as you are, metaphorically speaking.)</p>

9

<p>Both my kids are very serious string players and each have a very good violin or cello and very decent bow. When the cellist went to audition last year for college as a performance and compostion major we asked his teacher if he should upgrade before auditions either the cello or the bow or both and were told that was not the time to be making any equipment changes and the college teacher would likely want to be involved on the process when selecting a new instrument. But having said that he had a pretty decent cello already but I expect it will not be what he keeps finally. I remember all the applications asked what they are playing on.</p>

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<p>How interesting-- none of my daughter’s applications asked what instrument she used, IIRC. However, occasionally she was asked about the instrument in an audition or a trial lesson, but only in a casual way. We did go through the process of upgrading her instrument a year in advance of her auditions for college – for the reason that it takes a while to be fully comfortable in a new instrument.</p>

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<p>lmk70—I note that in your posts you refer to what “your daughter says”. Are you and your husband having one on one discussions about this with her current teacher as well?</p>

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<p>GlassHarmonica’s post is dead spot on about the process of getting a new instrument, what it means, the factors involved. I also agree totally a student should not be switching instruments just before auditions, string instruments are very, very unique beasts and there is a learning curve with them, each instrument plays differently. Give a violin student a guarneri or strad and they will prob find it difficult to play, they play beautifully but are def temperamental from what I hear. </p>

<p>In terms of the price,there really is no way to say how much to spend, there is no magical number and you never know what you will find. All instruments have limitations, some have a beautiful sound but aren’t loud (great chamber instruments, sucky as solo instruments), some play the high range in gorgeous tones and lower down not so much, and so forth. I am always leery when I hear things like ‘the min you should spend is 10k’, because at least with violin and viola, that simply isn’t true…put it this way, my S’s violin is prob worth 10k or so, we bought it for 6500, and it outplays instruments costing three times as much (more about the others being overpriced, but whatever). It merits a discussion about what drives price:</p>

<p>-The name of the maker. There are unknown makers out there, young luthiers, making wonderful instruments who because they haven’t had X violinist buy one of their instruments, can’t charge as much. A Joseph Curtin Violin I heard the other day that costs 35k may not play better then some new guy starting out, but the new guy is 6k…(btw, not saying the Curtin instrument isn’t good or worth it, far from it)…</p>

<p>-Unknown provenance. Violins ancestry is often hard to tell, luthiers can tell from clues what it might be, but knowing the history is difficult. Labels mean nothing (since they can be faked, have been for a long time). Again, a violin might be a fantastic instrument but it sits in obscurity because the maker is unknown or unsure (remember, collectors , who help boost prices, want the name…they don’t necessarily care as much about playing ability, as a musician might. </p>

<p>-The shop selling it. Some shops that shall remain nameless are notorious for jacking up the prices of instruments, whereas a similar violin from a differnt shop might be a lot less. I have seen chinese factory violins the shop set up and varnished selling them for 4 times the retail price of a similar instrument elsewhere.</p>

<p>-One other warning, be careful about when a teacher tells you you should spend ‘not less then X’ and you should buy it at store Y…while it could be genuine feeling on his/her part, that also smells like a very real phenomena, where teachers have deal with shops, the more expensive the instrument the more the kickback. Any string teacher knows that price has little direct relevance to sound, so to say that is suspicious to me (If a teacher says it, OP didn’t say where that come from). Reserve the right to choose your instrument where you want to buy it, a good teacher will only comment on the sound and work with the student to find one that seems to sound the best. If the teach actively helps, goes to shops, then pay them for their time, that is fine. </p>

<p>And yes, audition committees know about the effect of instrument, there are kids coming into auditions who are playing expensive, incredible instruments because they have them on loan from foundations or because their parents are well off. Person I work with husband is a luthier, and he just repaired a strad that belongs to a 15 year old violinst…so they get kids with the great ones and not so great ones. It would be kind of unfair to let a kid in simply because mom and dad were rich, and given that all of them once auditioned they know very well the difference between a good instrument and a less good one. </p>

<p>My take? Start going to string shops and try violas, not by price, but rather ask the shops to show you a range of violas in your expected budget range (for example, let’s say 5k-10k), and then play them without knowing the price, play them against one another, against your current instrument, using the current bow, and see how it sounds. Narrow it down to one potential per shop, get them out on trial, and try them at home against each other and your current instrument. Ideally, the cost would be unknown. </p>

<p>You may end up very surprised what comes out of this process, you may spend a lot less then 10k and get a Gem that will last for a while. </p>

<p>Note that often schools of music have their own collections, and it may be possible once enrolled to be able to borrow one from their collection.</p>

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<p>Also, unless you are purchasing a bow at the same time, make sure she uses the same bow to try out all the different instruments. No need to muck it up with yet another variable! :)</p>

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<p>I also strongly suggest not trying out instruments that are more than you planned on spending. We ended up with a much more expensive cello this way that we had planned.</p>

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<p>Hey - sent you a pm.</p>

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<p>Sometimes you can get away with a less expensive instrument and a more expensive bow. Try different combinations of the two because you will end up with different results. And instruments can sound differently depending on who is playing them. My son’s current cello sat in the luthier’s store room for 4 years because no one really sounded that good on it and so it was never purchased. However, it was a great instrument for my son and we got it at a good price. People in the know are often surprised when they hear what we spent because it sounds like an instrument costing twice as much.</p>

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I would like to know the name

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I would suggest starting a new thread on this, the person you asked was here in 2012, and may not be here any longer, plus people tend not to respond to threads that are this old.

19

An old thread but a timeless one. We all have limitations when we buy things, our funds, our location and especially our physical attributes. No matter what price range you are in, there’s an instrument for your player, the problem being finding it. Our daughter used my father’s viola, which was a very modest German instrument until she became the senior student in her teacher’s studio. Her teacher had a tradition of loaning out her second instrument, a 250 year old English viola to her top student and that was the viola our daughter took all of her auditions with. We knew we had to buy a viola before conservatory and were worried that every other instrument was going to seem like a big step down or that we would have to spend more than we had to find something. Both assumptions were false. The old English viola, though it sounded lovely, was actually not a good physical fit for her. With a lot of looking we found several instruments in our price range that she sounded much better on because they were the right size and had tonal characteristics that fit her personality. She ended up sounding so much better on a much less expensive instrument because it was a good fit and that’s much more important than price. With each year the viola sounds better and better, but that’s because not only is our daughter learning to play the viola, she’s learning how to play that particular viola.

We did all the variations when it came to finding an instrument, from playing in shops to having things sent to us for trail and one original thought I can add is to set aside money for trying out instruments. Just as you had to budget money to go look at schools and take trial lessons, you have to accept that looking for the right viola is going to cost time and money and plan accordingly. You did the legwork to find the schools; viola shopping is going to take nearly as much effort. Teacher advice is essential, but it possible, and I know it’s not always realistic, involve the teacher you are going to be studying with, not so much the teacher you have been studying with. Look forward. We rounded up a bunch of instruments and then drove a couple of states over to see the teacher our daughter was going to be studying with and let him help her decide. He helped her narrow down the choices to three and then took her down to the auditorium and we all got to listen to both her and him play the instruments. This, of course was ideal but it was only possible with a lot of planning and considerable time and expense.

In the end we ended up doing something I am NOT going to recommend and that was buying from a private seller. This is a very tricky situation that is fraught with pitfalls, but in our case it worked out and we were able to afford a much better instrument without paying any markup, but the process is not for everyone. With the more difficult purchase, the bow, we went the dealer route and I’m very glad we did. Dealers charge more, but many give you up to a year to upgrade your purchase and some even stand behind an instrument or a bow even when the maker won’t. Good dealers are worth the markup.

As far as the actual price range, I had several dealers and luthiers tell me that we needed to be spending more than our 12-15k budget. One of them told me bringing an instrument of that caliber this particular conservatory was like bringing a knife to a gunfight, but our daughter’s teacher told us that that was complete B.S. and that MOST of his students had instruments in the range we were talking about and were not at some sort of disadvantage. It’s the player, not viola. I would say that in the range of say 8k-15k there are literally hundreds of violas out there and it remains a buyer’s market for sure. Don’t be afraid to haggle.

20

I don’t know about gun-to-knifefight in terms of the price–whoever said that was probably overstating the case in a way that is bound to bring anxiety to people. My daughter did her undergrad degree in violin, then decided to apply for MM in viola. She passed all of her prescreens on a $1000 chinese factory-made viola we’d bought for her for play chamber music back when she was in middle school. Then she had a scramble to find an instrument in time for auditions–she did end up with a decent modern instrument, which she has since upgraded to a slightly larger instrument from the same maker. But she felt that while this instrument is very direct and clear, it is too strident and one-dimensional for much of the rep she plays. So the search continued.

Violas are a special case because there aren’t as many available on the market as violins and the vast majority are by modern makers, which are in the $15-$30K range. In her search, for fun, she played a $400K Amati–which she did not like at all. (It was very small and probably more valuable as an antique than for its musical potential.)

And you’re right: because the sizes vary immensely (and length is not the only factor–the size of the neck, the lower bouts, etc. have a big effect on the playabilty, depending on the player’s own physical characteristics–fit can be especially difficult. She was constrained in her search because she’s too small to play a giant instrument. My daughter ended up with two violas–the modern instrument, which is very powerful, and an older instrument that has more depth and color. The older instrument (18c) has a crack that reduces its value (which is how it was affordable) but does not affect its sound. That’s a lucky result of an extensive search.

The little viola from middle school, which sits home at our house, she will probably lend out to a student.

A lot depends on how you plan to use the instruments–you need a different voice for solo work, which must project above an orchestra, and for chamber, where the instrument needs to hold its own. If you’re planning a career in an orchestra, power and directness is not as crucial. And of course a lot comes down to personal taste: chocolately and cello-like, or sunnier and more violin-like? From the time I spent accompanying her on this three-year search I decided that viola-shopping is much more difficult than looking for violins.