Violin brand ?

Violin brand ?

What is a good brand of violin? My wife wants one for her bday.

Stradivarius.

Thanks. Wow, they are wickedly expensive.

For a hobby or for a orchestra?

I always liked Yamaha for instruments, both string and wind variants. Have a whole family of reed instruments (me), brass (brother), and strings (wife). They all have great sound, easy to stay in tune, and decently priced. They also have those silent body variants that have electric pickups. The Yamaha AV5 standard acoustic violin goes for somewhere around $300-$400 and to me, sounds as good as some that cost 10x that.

Bunch made in Germany - have great sounds as well like (all 4/4 sized = full size), Gunter Maibach, Horst SemiPro, Eastman Ludwig Doetsch, Roth, Rudoulf Doetsch - running about $1K to $2K a piece for intermediate to semipro level - about half that for beginners series (different strings, bows, body is more mass produced instead of indivudually made, etc.)

my mom has one of them, it was handmade and worth at least 2 grand

Get her a guitar and tell her to think of it as a large violin!

A genuine Strad? Unlikely. Those are worth $2-$3 MILLION each .

But Antonio Stradivari's sons and subsequent family still makes them - they don't sound the same, but are very good. Those go for between $2K-$5K

The original Stradivarius Violins (only ~600-650 made, most are unaccounted for) the very few that are genuine are in museums, top music oriented universities and in the hand of a few privledged players in the world.

But they serve as the model that almost every modern violin is copied after.

She already has a guitar. Good idea though . We also have a Yamaha console piano, a drum set, and a Casio electronic keyboard.

Is this a good one?

http://cgi.ebay.com/Beautiful-Flame...4QQihZ007QQcategoryZ10180QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Hard to tell from the photo - most "good" violins generally use a light softwood, like spruce, in the belly, sound post, and bass bar. The back, ribs, neck, pegbox, scroll, and bridge are usually a hardwood like maple.

For about $100 more, you could step up to a new Yamaha intermediate or standard 4/4 violin - I've seen ones that look exactly like that violin on eBay in a Target store for $99.