How to Clean Your Stringed Instrument at Home

Minor maintenance of violins, violas and cellos can and should be done by the player. Know what you’re doing – including when to call a professional.

All stringed instruments ¬– violins, cellos and violas – are in certain respects alive. The strings, the various components (neck, pegbox, pegs, strings, bow and bow strings, the body and finish, even inside the instrument) have components that are subject to dirt, dust, your perspiration, and excess rosin. Without proper maintenance those components can suffer ¬– and so too might your playing.

Some maintenance and repairs are best done by your preferred local violin shop (your violin maker, who often is the violin repairer). But on a regular basis the violinist, cellist, bassist, etc. should maintain certain habits and routines to minimize damage and maximize the life and performance of his or her instrument.

This is equally true of higher-end, fine stringed instruments as well as student and intermediate models. Proper, ongoing maintenance is just the rule of the day.

Think of the approach to cleaning your instrument at home in three parts:

Step 1: Before playing

• Wash your hands.
• Check to make sure you cleaned it after playing it last time (if not, follow Step 2 before playing, and again after finishing).

Step 2: After playing

• Look at what a mess you made! Rosin dust, human sweat …
• Get out two lint-free dry cloths. These can be microfiber fabrics, such as those used to clean eyeglasses and computer and phone screens. Or, a thin cotton cloth that has been washed a sufficient number of times there is not fiber residue. Technically speaking, no fabric is completely lint-free; it’s a matter of how much (less is more where it comes to cleaning stringed instruments).
• Remove the shoulder rests from violins and violas.
• The first cloth should be used to wipe the strings of bow rosin and other accumulated dirt.
• The second cloth is to clean off the neck and body of the instrument. Why a second cloth? The rosin dust on the first can scratch the varnish on other parts of the instrument.

Periodically (as needed, depending on frequency and duration of play)

• A “magic rub eraser” is another means for removing rosin, but only from non-porous surfaces. Considered an “art eraser,” they are made with soft vinyl and are sold under different brand names (Prismacolor, Pentel, Paper Mate, Faber-Castell and Bazic, among others).
• Never use alcohol, acetone or paint thinner to remove rosin or grease on strings or the body of the instrument.
• For insistent marks or accumulated dirt on the instrument body, see your violin maker for violin cleaning products.
• The bridge might have collected rosin as well. In hard to reach areas use a cotton swab (Q-tip). On other areas use a soft cloth.
• To polish the violin, viola, cello or bass, use only instrument (not furniture) polish purchased from your luthier.
• Clean the bow also with a light cloth, wiping in the direction of the hairs, taking care to use a light touch and not going against the grain.
• Very valuable, antique instruments should be cleaned by professional violinmakers.

Keep in mind the violin case, its home when not being played, should be clean as well. A vacuum hose should be used on the case to suck away dust.

A clean instrument is one with a long life and brilliant sound. Careful and constant attention makes it happen.

Getting a Fine Instrument Insured: Some Helpful Tips

Fine instruments are beautiful works of craftsmanship, and very vulnerable to come what may. Being careful means obtaining an insurance policy.

There are horror stories about fine stringed instruments getting damaged. You’ve heard them. Despite meticulous care and love a musician puts into his or her instrument, it can be destroyed in an instant.
Wunderkind David Garrett was age 26 in 2008 when it happened. After the end of a concern at London’s Barbican he tripped on a wet outdoor staircase, fell – and landed on his 1772 Giovanni Guadagnini violin. It was shortly after he finished paying off the £ 1.2 million loan to purchase it. The accident, even though the violin was in its case, was catastrophic for the instrument. Garrett was uninjured.

“I felt as if I’d lost a friend,” the virtuoso told a writer for The Guardian newspaper. “The body was cracked all over. I must have sat there for 10 or 15 minutes. I didn’t shout or cry. I just stared. I was in shock. Some moments in life are almost impossible to grasp – surreal. I was in a state of disbelief.”

Garrett was in many respects fortunate. He believes the violin in its case, strapped to his back, may have prevented bodily injury. And the fine violin was insured. It took a violin shop seven-months to repair the violin at a cost of £60,000 and restored the instrument to playing condition.

Insurance works – even for student instruments

Not every violin is worth a million dollars (or Pounds Sterling, in the case of UK currency). But even if an instrumentalist invests only $500 in a violin, viola, cello, base or harp, that is money that came through someone’s hard work. Fortunately, there is a way to insure almost everything. The trick is to pay only as much as is required to prevent a complete loss resulting from a theft, accident or natural disaster.

Here are key considerations in how to insure a musical instrument:

Value of the instrument – Of course repair and replacement costs for an instrument of any value is the goal. For non-professionals, a lower-cost instrument will have a lower insurance cost. Professional instruments valued above $5,000 will of course require a better policy at a higher premium. Every instrument, every player’s circumstances and every insurer must be considered to identify instrument value and insurance cost.

Existing homeowner or renter insurance policy – Lower-value instruments may well fall under a home/renter’s policy. But some only cover the instrument in the home, or for damage due to theft or fire but not floods and earthquakes. Theft from a car might be treated differently than from the home. Ask your insurance agent.

Travel? – Boarding planes, passing through immigration, staying in hotels and playing in unfamiliar concert halls can bring different risks to the instrument. Insurers will want to know about this in order to write an appropriate policy.

Larger instruments cost more – That fine cello is larger, easier to bump into, subject to different conditions while traveling, and doesn’t accompany the player into every room the way a prized violin might. This adds to overall vulnerability as well as to insurance premiums.

There are several different insurance companies that specialize in musical instruments (ValuePenguin, Heritage, Harmonia, Clarion, Anderson, Merz-Huber, and others). But household-name companies (Allstate, Farmers, Liberty Mutual, etc.) offer policies as well.

In case you think Garrett’s experience was isolated, think again. Cellist Peter Stumpf simply left his Stradivarius cello on his front doorstep after performing with the Los Angeles Philharmonic. It was stolen, damaged, dumped, then found by a nurse whose boyfriend offered to use his carpentry skills to fashion it into a CD rack (this was in 2004). The $3.5 million instrument made the news, so fortunately the nurse and her boyfriend became aware of it’s value and returned the instrument to Stumpf. The cello needed repairs – fortunately, a luthier was able to restore it to fine condition.

Geared Pegs for Stringed Instruments

The “planetary geared” peg makes tuning easier on violins, violas, and cellos. There are several additional reasons to favor them.

Geared pegs are a newer innovation when it comes to useful – some may say ingenious – stringed instrument accessories. Widely available both online as well as at the local violin shop, these pegs boil down larger points of difference – some might say conflicts – within a relatively simple, small thing.

If you’re new to what a geared peg is, here’s the simplest explanation: the tension and therefore tuning of strings on any type of stringed instrument (violin, viola, cello, bass, ukulele, etc.) can happen at either end: the pegbox at the top of the instrument, or the fine tuners at the bottom of the instrument (toward the chinrest on a violin). But for the most part, the tuning pegs at the scroll end are most frequently adjusted to achieve proper tuning.

Historically, these pegs were held in place and adjusted by friction between the peg and the surrounding pegbox wood. But a geared peg is more technically advanced. Hidden inside what appear to be traditional pegs are a set of planetary gears –¬ so named because they involve a smaller (the “sun”) and larger (“ring,” like planets) toothed gears – that do two things. One is that they allow for more precise tuning because it takes bigger, more exaggerated movement by the hands of the instrumentalist to achieve smaller changes in the tension. Second, it makes the process of tuning easier for those hands (i.e., less pressure and strength is required).

So what’s the conflict?

For starters, Stradivari, Guarneri and all other pre-20th century violinmakers never worked with geared pegs. These are modern innovations, arguably in the category of steel (not gut) strings and composite (not pernambuco) bows. Purists may scoff, but under many conditions and circumstances these newer innovations make sense. What’s interesting is that makers of geared pegs are careful to ensure the appearance of the pegs is preserved, not visible to anyone observing the instrument even at close distance.

Another conflict that is essentially solved with geared pegs is how abrupt humidity differences require acclimatization of the instrument and therefore frequent tuning. This is because wood pegs and the pegbox into which they are inserted are made of different types of wood that respond differently to humidity and aridity. The traveling violinist, violist or cellist knows how important this can be.

But perhaps the conflict resolution that geared pegs provide that is of greatest benefit to the vast majority of players is the ease with which geared pegs are adjusted. Children and older adults, or anyone with compromised wrist biomechanics, may lack the sufficient strength to execute the somewhat awkward maneuver of traditional pegs.

Is the sound different when played on an instrument with geared pegs? As with gut vs. steel and pernambuco vs. composite, it mostly boils down to the player and their pragmatic considerations (and having a good luthier to install them). In some cases it’s almost impossible to know, since those gears are hidden within the traditional-appearing pegs.