My daughter has started to learn the violin. She is now learning with her school and will get a violin on loan with the school lessons, certainly this year. But last year she had had a sort of taster day at school where she got to hear and try out different orchestral instruments to see which one she might be interested in learning to play. Despite her insistence before this session that it would definitely be a brass instrument, just like her brother, that she would like the most and her refusal to consider that she might like any other instrument, she came home that day really excited about learning to play the violin. So I thought I would try to capitalise on that excitement by getting her a second hand violin, and also trying to learn to play alongside her myself.
I needed to get both mine and my daughter’s violins looked over, and in the case of my violin, repaired before we could begin, and looking for a place that could help me with this, I turned to Moseley Violins in, well, Moseley, Birmingham. While I was there, the lovely owners were kind enough to give me a bit of a tour of their shop and tell me about the services they offer to people in Birmingham, and beyond.
Who are Moseley Violins?
Moseley Violins are a specialist violin shop. They were initially based in the Custard Factory (yes, there is a place in Birmingham called The Custard Factory) but moved to their current location just outside the city centre. They sell all string instruments – violins, violas, cellos, double basses, electro and electro-acoustic instruments, the accessories like the rosin, bows, shoulder rests and cases to go along with those instruments. There are new and second hand instruments available to purchase at the shop.
There is a team of 4 working at Moseley Violins, and I found them to be a very helpful, knowledgable and lovely team of people when I went in to see them. There are 3 luthiers (people who make stringed instruments) who work at Moseley Violins – David Johnson, François Bignon who have been working together for over 40 years, and Mike O’Neill. They work with and are supported by Pam Johnson, who I had a chance to sit down with to find out more about the services Moseley Violins have on offer to the community – local and even national. On the day I visited there was another person in the shop who was trying out a number of violins in a room separate to the main shop floor. She was left to take her time trying the violins out, but at times she had questions, and so David Johnson went into the room with her to answer the questions or show her features of the violins she was looking at.
The shop is open mainly by appointment Tuesday to Saturday – they can get busy, and like to offer a very personal service, so they very much recommend that you make an appointment before heading to the shop so that you can get the best service possible, and take advantage of their wealth of expertise.
Buying a violin, viola, cello or double bass
We want to make buying your violin, and this is especially the case with your first violin, a magical experience. It takes a while to buy a violin, it’s not something that can be rushed through, but something that can take 30 minutes to an hour to do. We think that you should be able to get an appreciation and understanding of the whole instrument when you are choosing one, rather than just get one handed to you and that is that. So what we would probably do when a young person comes in to choose their first, or one of their first violins, is to show them this picture:
Looking at the picture, we will point out things all of the features of the violin, and talk about things like the sound post, and talk about how important it is that it sits in the right place. Obviously, it will depend on how much the child is interested, how long we spend looking at the picture together. Some children are more interested and engaged than others, but we do like them to know where a violin comes from, if you like.
When people make enquiries about coming to buy an instrument, we have a pack that we will give them. This pack aims to help new students understand some of the terminology they will hear when looking at an instrument, and to explain to them what it is we do to an instrument before it is ready to be sold, it talks about all of the accessories you would need for a new violin, like the rosin and the shoulder rest for example. Sometimes the children can be just as excited, and sometimes even more so, about the accessories than the instrument itself!
We sell all sizes of violins from 1/64 (which is for very small children) upwards to full size violins. For cellos, we usually have a 1/16 size cello and upwards to full size cellos. For violas, we can convert violins into violas. If the child looking for an instrument is too small for a standard viola we can actually make violins sound like violas. Most people who play viola start on the violin, because the viola itself is a larger instrument, and there aren’t smaller size violas. There is, actually, a shortage of people who play the viola and that might be partly because everyone who starts playing when they are young will start on the violin because the viola is too big for them, and they may not be made aware when they are big enough for it, that playing the viola is an option for them. But the viola does have a deeper sound to it than the violin, and some people really do love that deeper sound that it makes.
So we have both new instruments and second hand ones, especially part size instruments – as children grow they need larger instruments and so they don’t need their smaller violins and cellos any more, so we have a good stock of smaller size instruments. We have had some customers who are now adults leading orchestras, and they have been coming back to us whenever they need a new instrument since they were children, and it is such a delight to see how they have developed over the years!
The instruments we have for sale here range in price from, well at the moment we have a 1/8 size violin for around £200 to thousands for the hand made, hand carved violins, and to a lot of money for some of our antique violins. We know that there are cheaper violins and cellos available online, but we have a good range of good quality instruments to suit all violin players from children just starting out to professionals. We will always ask you what your budget is for a new instrument and stick as close as possible to that budget.
Try before you buy
One of the lovely services we have is a room where people can come and try out an instrument before they commit to buying it. In many shops you would have a chance to try out an instrument while in the main shop, but we used to run quite a lot of events (sadly, we are unable to run them now as we are just too busy with the work we have on), and so we have a room just off our main shop area where people can come in and try playing an instrument to see what it sounds like and feels like. If a person can’t play the instrument themselves, we can play it for them so they can get a feel for what the instrument can sound like. David plays violin, viola and cello, François plays double bass
We definitely try to encourage customers to come and try out their instruments here before the commit to buying them. In fact we often have parents who are buying an instrument for their child. They will say that they don’t need to come and try an instrument out because they wouldn’t know the difference between different instruments, but when we play for them on the violins they are looking at they can hear the difference in the tone the instruments produce, you know, that one’s brighter or richer. I think that may be why we have a lot of repeat custom from people coming back for their next violin, because people know that we’ll look after them and make it a special experience.
While a lot of our customers are local to Birmingham, there are quite a lot who come from further afield – especially for our repair service, was there are fewer and fewer places that can offer repairs – even some international customers. It is, of course, not easy for them to come into the shop on a few occasions, and so we have been known to arrange a session by zoom with international customers so they can have as close to the experience they would have in store as possible online. We will show them the instrument, play it for them, talk them through any questions or concerns they have, all as we would do in person.
The workshop
We have a workshop upstairs, where we can offer repairs to string instruments. And when any instrument comes into the shop we will set it up ready for purchase. Now, instruments may arrive saying that they are already set up, but we will still get the instrument out, and check that everything is working as it should to make the instrument play as easily as it can and sound the best that instrument can. Sometimes we have children bringing their own instruments in and when we look at it we wonder how on earth they can have been playing it, because the instrument just isn’t set up quite right, or maybe it doesn’t sound very nice at all because of the way the instrument is set up. And of course, we are able to repair string instruments here in our workshop as well.
We offer trade in service against buying an instrument from us for good quality stringed instruments. This is how we get our second hand violins, violas and cellos that we sell in the shop. For all instruments that we accept as a trade in, including instruments that have been bought from us in the first place, we take the instrument up into the workshop and re-set them up because over time strings wear out as does bow hair, maybe the sound post has moved with use or some other issue has developed.
Other services
We have a range of products to support string players here in the shop. Looking first at sheet music, we focus mainly on music for the ABRSM syllabus on violin. We have various different strings available, and can talk people through the different strings we have here, and what might be suitable for them and their instrument. We have rosin, shoulder rests, mutes, dehumidifiers, pegs, cases all the things you would expect from a shop selling string instruments.
If you have bought your string instrument from us, then we will tune it for free for you, maybe if your child hasn’t played for a while over the summer holidays, say.
As well as our large range of violins, violas and cellos, and a few double basses, we also sell electric and semi-acoustic instruments, and these can help people who have a particular type of hearing loss, and we can advise people with hearing loss if one of our instruments could be suitable for them.
The range of Violectra violins, you can see one on our wall here, are custom made violins that David Johnson makes. They are hand carved to order and take a very long time to make, and so are rather special instruments. We are lucky to have a very loyal set of customers for our Violectras.
We have a Local Music Teachers Folder that customers can have a look through, where music teachers can come and leave their cards and their details with us for people to have a look through. We actually have piano tuners in here as well.
David is also a trained guitar maker, so we have some second hand guitars, and we can repair guitars for people. In fact, we can repair anything with strings and we have repaired various instruments including things like ouds and sitars. In fact anything with strings, we can advise people on how to buy those instruments if they are looking for advice, and we can likely get those instruments in if we haven’t got the stock at the time they contact us.
So this is Moseley Violins. If you are looking for a new violin for yourself or one of your children, I would highly recommend making an appointment to go along to Moseley Violins. They really do know their stuff. And while their violins, and their repair service, may not be the cheapest around, I do think they are really good value for what they do and what they can offer you. Contact details for Moseley Violins are:
Website: Moseley Violins
Telephone Number: 0121 693 1214
Email: info@moseleyviolins.co.uk
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