Paying for an instrument

musicprnt
Thu, 14 Jun 2012 10:30:39 +0000

String instruments are very different from others in my experience, brass and woodwind instruments and such lend themselves to being ‘factory made’ and the sound quality doesn’t vary that much from instrument to instrument as much as it does with a string instrument. On top of that string instruments, especially violins and cellos, are collectors items, a guaneri violin owned by Aaron Rosand was sold for 10 million at auction not long ago…which raises the price. String instruments, good ones, are made by hand, and older ones as others have said can/often are a lot more expensive then new ones, and there is a reason for this. String instruments develop their own sound, that to me is a combination of how they were made, the materials, and the people that played them, and that combination of factors makes the sound they produce, and with the musician it depends on finding the one that ‘clicks’ with them as people have said.

And yes, they are very expensive, we face that with my S in the near future, he is going to need a better violin in the near future and it will prob be a min of 20k, if not more, to find one that fits what he will need. It isn’t that price alone means anything, buying a 30k violin vs a 20k doesn’t mean anything, the 20k could be a lot better instrument but the 30k is from someone who has made ‘a name’ for themselves…good quality modern instruments from top luthiers are now pushing 100k…

That said, a couple of thoughts on buying an instrument:

-Don’t go in expecting to pay a certain price, and don’t just look at instruments at a price range, and don’t assume because they show you an instrument that is significantly less then you have looked at it isn’t worth looking at…I have been in shops when people come in (these are young musician’s families), where they say “I want to see a violin, and don’t show me anything less then 10k, the teacher said that” (my unsaid words said to the owner of the shop “better to get new teacher then new violin”; on top of everything else, likely teacher figures they can try and get a ‘finders fee’ out of the shop, more violin costs, more they get…).

Shop around, start going to music shops now and see what is out there. Others are right, you cannot buy it sight unseen or heard, you need to compare them. Rather then telling the store a specific price range, ask to see a sampling across the range (for a lot of string shops, they generally don’t have that many basses, so it is easier). Don’t ask to know the price, have your child play them side by side, eliminating them, and see what happens. You may be surprised that an 8k instrument plays better then one that is 30k…

-Once you find possible candidates at the shops, see if you can borrow them (they will with violins)…I realize it is hard because of the size of them, but if you have some candidates from a few shops, take them out, and have the kid play them side by side at home and see which one seems to grab them.

-Don’t limit yourself where you shop for instruments, make it a broad based search. Obviously talk to musicians if you can or other music families to see where they have gone, to weed out obvious clunkers, but the wider the range the better. Also, be very, very careful with teacher recommendations on where to go, if they seem to be steering you to specific shops be wary of that. There is a dark side to instrument shopping, there are teachers out there who have deals with music stores, where they get kickbacks for sending students there, and it is a scam because what happens is the store owner will jack up the price (based on what they would charge someone coming off the street) to make up the teacher’s ‘cut’. Teachers argue this is fair payment for their time, but that is crap. First of all, sending a student to a store isn’t taking time to do anything. If the teacher is involved in the search, goes with the student to listen to instruments and so forth, they should be compensated for their time, but it should be above board. I have seen parents get absolutely gouged on instruments, paying a ridiculous amount for what is basically a chinese factory violin (nothing wrong with the instrument, but paying 2500 bucks for something you could get for 500 is horrible).

You may find out you can pay a lot less then you might think, sometimes you find a gem, my kid’s last violin was like that.

There are places that finance instruments, but I would be careful with those, they generally are like store credit cards, very high rates. You might do better if you have to finance it (and I would try to minimize the amount financed), might do better with a personal loan from a credit union or possibly using home equity, though these days a lot of people find that isn’t so easy to do…another option might be to borrow against a 401k, but I tend to agree the best route is to try and not finance it.

The other option (and I cannot say how hard/easy this is for a bass), there are foundations of all kinds that lend out instruments to music students and musicians. While a lot of these tend to be high end instruments (like lending a student a strad or similar level instrument) I seem to recall there are foundations and such out there that lend more modest instruments, might be worth trying to find out.