Stringing a new violin help

[dennis davidson]

Probably a trivial question but not being a musician I don't have a clue. I am finishing up my build of a new violin, for my grandson, and I'm ready to string it. It's a 4/4 size and the strings I bought are for a 4/4, the issue is that the strings may be too long, when I started to do the G string I realized that the end that goes through the peg hole would need to extend past the fiber wrap on the end of the string and the bare wire would be wrapped around the peg. Is this normal? Should I cut the excess string? Do I need to buy shorter strings? I believe all the measurements on the violin body are correct so I don't think that is an issue.

[Jim Creech]

Cut the excess. You only need about 3 turns on the wound strings and 4 on the plain string. An extra turn won't hurt anything but do not use the entire length.

[dennis davidson]

336864
Jim, thanks it was pretty easy to do.

[Allan Speers]

It's a 4/4 size and the strings I bought are for a 4/4, the issue is that the strings may be too long, when I started to do the G string I realized that the end that goes through the peg hole would need to extend past the fiber wrap on the end of the string and the bare wire would be wrapped around the peg. Is this normal?


That sounds very odd to me, and I've played violin all my life, using all manner of strings. I'm assuming you triple-checked the effective scale length (length of the vibrating string) so:

1: Are you SURE you bought violin strings, not viola?

2: Are you using a 4/4 tailpiece?

3: Have you set the after-length correctly? (This, BTW, is critical for obtaining a nice singing tone)

4: Maybe you neck angle or bridge is too high?