As I mentioned on Gargoyle Steve's thread concerning Earth Hour/dark skies, I have been showing a few people the view of the night skies through my scope.One of them, on hearing of my interest in violins and playing them, has very kindly lent me hers, as she has no time at present to learn how to play.
It's been over 13 years since I played one myself, and I was never any more than a self taught beginner myself, and it's amazing how much you can forget in 13 years. To say that it's a time consuming challenge is an under statement. Nevertheless, I'm going to persevere.
I have a technical problem, however. The damned thing won't stay in tune!
That is to say, I can tune it up correctly, but the tuning pegs won't hold, and the minute I exert bow pressure on the string, the peg slips in the head and the string goes slack.
We only have one luthier in town and on phoning him he told me that it's just a cheap violin and would need the head to be machined at a cost of about $200. That didn't sit real well with me for several reasons. (At least 200 of them.)
I was thinking that I might remove the pegs and try roughing them up a bit with a bit of coarse sand paper, or maybe even apply a bit of blu-tak to the pegs to stop them slipping, but obviously I don't want to do anything that may ultimately damage it as it's not my instrument.
The tuning pegs, I should explain, aren't the "rack and pinion" type that you find on guitars. They're a wooden corkscrew friction type fit.
Anyone have any ideas?
