Jay Haide Balestrieri Violin Review

What a superb violin!

I had never been able to get a decent violin before. First I had to suffer the poverty of youth, then the poverty of college, then the poverty of the Peace Corps and entry level jobs and the recessions brought on by Capitalism’s healthy corrections (thank God that Capitalism can remain healthy, even it it takes throwing half of us out of work for it to stay that way), then the poverty of marriage and the poverty of bringing up a little family, then the poverty of divorce. Poverty, poverty, poverty. The best I was able to do, from time to time was buy the most affordable entry level violins. Hey, a cheap violin is infinitely better than no violin at all … unless, of course, you ask the neighbors.

Anyway, as the years progressed, I had been doing a lot of keyboard work, and filling out my experience with guitars and bass guitars, and then remembered my original and ancient love for violins. I guess I had shied away from getting back to violins… it had practically broke my heart when decades ago a young and pretty wife had put it to a practical choice, her or my cheap violin. I told myself I didn’t need it… the violin, not the pretty wife… and must have rather convinced myself. Violins became too sad a subject for me to easily think about. But eventually Time heals such old wounds, and so one day while I was scanning the market for a feasible electric violin purchase, I got another cheapie acoustic entry level violin to tide me over for a spell – a Mathias Thoma Model 30.

As for the Electric, I eventually choose to get the NS Design WAV4 Electric Violin from Johnson Strings, and while I was tying up that purchase, and ordering little accessory knickknacks, I asked if they had any mid-level decent violins at an affordable price. And then I described the tone I wanted.

Now, they have a vocabulary for violin tones, and it takes a while to totally grasp it and I still don’t know whether I entirely have a hold on it, but “bright” and “brilliant” mean shrill or strident, that is carrying a lot of high frequency components even on the lower strings. “Dark” means the tones stay close to their fundamentals with low harmonic content. “Rich”… well, I’m confused about what that might mean.

Anyway, they had me speak to their Sales Manager, Mr. Mathew Fritz, and simply to alley any misunderstandings, I described how I set up my electric guitars, electric bass guitars, and now even my electric violin, and asked him if he had an acoustic violin that would come naturally that way. You see, what I do is turn the bass way up and the trebles way down – I hate buzzy high frequency components and like the tones to be round and clean, full of their own body and not borrowing from the higher registers of harmonic distortion. As my father used to say, “treble” is another word for “tinny”.

He told me that what I wanted was a “dark” violin, and the darkest violin he had in my price range was a Jay Haide a l'ancienne Balestrieri Model. I was told that I was not the only violin player in the world to express a desire for The Dark Side. While most the World flocks to some derivative or another of the Stradivarius violins, their particular ‘brightness’ puts off a sizeable minority. Now, I had been thinking in my ignorance that there was either the Stradivaris or the Guarneris, the Guarneri being purportedly “darker” than the Stradivari. But apparently a generation or two after Stradivar and Guarneri had their glory days there were violin makers who went into the business of adding extra emphasis to what the players of their own day considered the separate virtues of the two great rivals. Well, Belestreri stepped forward and proclaimed that if people wanted Dark, well, he could deliver Dark like nobody else ever before him. So it was that Mr. Fritz suggested, in so many words, that if I were not to go just half way, merely in the shadows of darkness, but wished to totally plunge into the most dismal gradations of somberness, then I should have to get a Belesteri Model.

Oh, and then I told him that there would be an important proviso – I would be using steel strings. I tried various brands of Synthetic Core Strings, but what they all have in common is aluminum windings. Well, aluminum is the most fragile substance on earth and it simply doesn’t last. Go online and search up ‘unraveling violin A strings’ and see how many hits you get. The Forum Discussions almost entirely blame the players. All these strings are failing but somehow it is not the fault of the string. The most cogent advice I found was that if one simply had to have the Synthetic Core String Sound and hope to have the strings last more than a few practice sessions (yes! I had synthetic strings that did not last even for a single week!), then one would have to play one’s violin “as though it were encrusted with butterfly wings”. Now, that’s wonderful advice for delicate little girls and too-soft little boys, but for a salty old man who sometimes likes to have a drink or two before playing along with The Who’s “Baba O’Reilly” (still the best violin solo ever in Rock and Roll history), such advice is useless, except for sending one off to find an alternative to Aluminum Wound Synthetic Core Violin Strings.

Well, online rumor had it that the mellowest of all the steel strings was the Thomastik Superflexibles, which are a braided steel core wound in chrome-steel. It was either that or D’Addario Helicores… so I flipped a coin. The Superflexibles are fine… although I’ve found that the G string will sound a bit buzzy on its first practice session, but the next day it will sing an “OOOO” for you just fine.

Anyway, Mr. Mathew Fritz allowed that given a naturally brighter string than most synthetics, the Jay Haide Balesteri was the best suited for dealing with it… that not all of the Balesteri’s natural darkness could possibly be washed out by a marginally brighter string, especially allowing that the Thomastik Superflexible was considered widely to be the mellowest of its steel string genre.

Oh, and Mr. Fritz pointed out that the Jay Haide Violins were wonderful values for the money; that young professionals were getting pit work and studio work in New York with them, ostensibly passing them off as much better healed instruments.

You know, after talking with Mr. Fritz of Johnson Strings, I wondered that he had not recommended one of the Chinese Shopmade Instruments , but a quick search online corrected me in that regards. The Jay Haide violins are made in China. This a good thing. A lot of nice things are said of the woods available in China. Now, it is also said that the Chinese have been a bit impatient with their curing and drying, but this is also one of the contributing factors for the affordability of Chinese Violins. The important thing to remember is that a Chinese Violin will get significantly better in just a few years… even a few months…, as it reaches an optimum dryness. But a European Violin, as good as it is, will be as good as it gets, unless one can wait a generation or two for some incremental improvement.

Anyway, it all came to the test when my Jay Haide Balesteri Violin arrived in the mail (international shipping… I couldn’t believe how quickly it arrived, and that Johnson Strings shipping department had wasted so little time). My first impression was that the antiquing is startlingly convincing. One opens the case and sees what looks like an actual museum relic. It is really beautiful once one adjusts to all the faux-scratches and faux-fades and faux-wear’n’tear. Really the skilled blend of the reds and browns in the antiqued varnish… well, the beauty of it is transfixing. Sometimes I don’t even play… I just stare at that beautiful violin in a state of aesthetically induced ecstatic rapture. .

Oh, but was Mr. Fritz right about the sound? Did the Darkness of the Balesteri survive the steel string setup. Oh, yes, by the way, Mr. Fritz will have their shop setup the violin any way you like. So I did not have to wait to change out the strings myself… he sent it prepared just as I asked.

Well, yes, but the violin did apparently need a few days to settle in – bringing full tension to the strings and allowing the bridge and sound post to settle in. And the new Thomastik Superflexible G string always takes a day to round itself out, tone wise. Anyway, after a few days it sounded lovely. The darkness resides best in the two lower strings, but if one is careful on the bow with the A and E strings, then even these naturally shrill strings are willing to sing nice round sounding “OOOOO”s.

Oh, I did have one problem. It seems that all quality violins are sold with just one fine tuner, for the E string which is always a wire and therefore hard to tune in with just the clunky old traditional peg. The problem is, though, if one uses steel strings, then they are all virtually like wire, and peg tuning to any consistent accuracy is practically impossible, and always more time consuming than it really needs to be. So if you are going to use steel strings with your fine violin, then order three more finetuners… only $2.50 a piece. Mr. Fritz will probably even offer to have them installed during his courtesy setup.

Yes, I’ve heard that they say that Fine Tuners will dampen some of the Violin’s tone. But remember, when they talk about structure dampening tone, primarily they are talking about muffling those bright and brilliant, shrill and strident, high frequency components. Remember, Structures attenuate high frequencies while allowing low frequencies to pass. In short, the fine tuners might actually make an instrument “Darker” and if darker is what one likes, then don’t hesitate to get the fine tuners! Also I heard it said on line that sometimes the fine tuners will buzz. Well, they are designed to be slipped into the tailpieces string holes and tightened down with these round knurled nuts, so just make sure they are tightened snuggly and that will preclude them buzzing because they are loose. But, admittedly, from the engineering standpoint, little components like that might also buzz if surrounding vibrations cause them to hit their own natural resonant frequency. Well, I played my scales really hard, up and down, hitting every good note and as many of the bad one’s as I could figure on, and was not able to elicit a single aberrant ‘buzz’ from my four fine tuners.

Incidentally, the case is really nice. There is enough room even for a conventional shoulder rest.

So, in brief, I am very happy with the Jay Haide Violin, and with the entire staff at Johnson Strings – Sales, Bills and Accounting, and Shipping. It makes one appreciate how wonderful it could be to live in a Perfect World and to hope with just a few more such encouragements, that Life is perhaps beginning to become ‘fair’. Or if life again proves to be miserable and disappointing, well, at least one has a good violin to play. If one must ‘fiddle while Rome burns’, one should at least do it on a nice fiddle like the Jay Haide Balesteri.