Last Saturday, we finally received and did an inventory count 0f the latest batch of string instrument fittings from India. It's a tedious process of making sure the right part goes to each bin and accounting for the right enough amount on the P.O. Then the computers and Amazon need to be updated with the received stock.

At least the company does a good job shipping. None of the parts were broken and the items were organized according to numbering system on the boxes.

No new parts were ordered in the latest batch. However, the carved violinist tailpiece that we usually order looked like it had a new design. Even the boxwood version of it, well, features a woman! I actually like it:)Another item to note, our customized beta product, the light weight wooden tailpiece with built-in fine tuenrs has arrived.


Now, I know a lot of makers, dealers, and teachers aren't too fond of a tailpiece with built-in tuners. If a tuner were to break, it's very hard to fix, so the customer may need to buy a whole new tailpiece to replace. Performance wise, the material is often indestructible but too heavy and creates an imbalance in the instrument's acoustics. Also, your aesthetic choices are pretty limited to industrial materials such as aluminum alloy.

Why don't people bother to invest in a better built-in fine tuner tailpiece? Some people just don't know that it can make a difference. For those that do know but still shrug and use those old models, it seems to be an issue of cost and time. They are cheap to manufacture and easy to expense from a shop's perspective. They also doesn't take away time from the teacher's lesson of having to tune the instrument every time for their still struggling student.

The best one we've seen out there on the market is the Wittner tailpiece. We admit it, we use them. They're especially good for the fractional size violins.

Having said that though, nothing sure beats the good acoustical sound that a wooden tailpiece can produce. Well, we may have found it. We will be rolling these out as a beta product on our line of Alessandro Fine Fittings. These tailpieces are custom designed and addresses many of the mechanical design, aesthetic, and cost issues that people have with built-in fine tuners.

We've recently had more referrals for repair jobs than in the past.

This one is a Eastman quarter size double bass that came to the shop.

It's neck has come loose and we're trying to set it back in place.

Now, we aren't the kind of retail store that has fancy tracking systems like RFID tags or UPC bar codes. However, we do have a system that's efficient than your typical shop. All of our instruments in the shop are have a discrete "ACV" serial number inside their f-holes. All these numbers are compiled in an ever changing and expanding database as instruments come in returned, sold, or are no long with us (such as violins with a broken scroll or button).

The hardest thing to catalog in the shop has to be the bows. We've talked to other shops and they all seem to agree. Telling the difference between one bow and the next can be tough without a trained eye. Imagine the nightmare of training that new salesman to go by eye instead of a system. When I first started working at the shop, I had difficulty telling the difference between a silver and a nickel button. Can you tell the difference in the various models of frogs patterns? The convenience of a maker's stamp may help distinguish it from the others but what about the older ones with now illegible worn off stamps?

The simple solution was to use the same tagging techniques used in our ACV serial number system. However, we ran into a problem here as well. The biggest obstacle was the lack of surface area that a bow has in comparison to an instrument. The tag had to be visible to the salesman and to be of non-interference for the player's hand.

Asking around various shops, we heard of an ingenious tag solution. Apparently they drop a tiny serial number into the mortise of the frog. We thought of this option too but decided against since it's too cumbersome from a customer service standpoint. The customer would have to sit and wait as the salesman would unscrew the button, find the number in the mortise, check the database, and began his pitch.

We bounced around ideas for tags such as a thread and tag, sticker, ribbon, or a paper wrapped around the stick. Ultimately the sticker won out after a trial-and-error of wrong placements on the head, heel, thumb leather, winding, and even on the stick; all of which lead to sticky clean up situations. The next violin bow that's bought from this shop will be found on the side of the frog.

This was our grand week long project: to catalog the entire bow collection in the shop (partly the reason why the belatedness in the entries). On the old system, we were going off of Maker's Stamps, Consignment letter descriptions, and distant memories. The labelmaker churned out small strips while Lester carefully examined each bow and entered all the information into our newly created database. This one is more comprehensive than the instrument list we have. It's also very specific data fields such as maker, stamp, balance point, setting, winding, head plate, button, consignor, owner, etc...