Workshop - Alex Grant Violins

The workshop

The workshop at Alex Grant Violins attends to all set-up, repair and complex restoration work. If we can help you with a condition report or repairs to your instrument, we’d love to hear from you.

– Appraisals
– Condition Reports
– Consignment appraisals
– Repair quotes
– Valuations

– Open seams
– Shooting fingerboards
– Loose fingerboards
– String height adjustments
– Bushing pegs
– Bass bar/ soundpost cracks
– Resetting/grafting necks
– Crack repairs and patches
– Varnish retouching
– Cleaning

– Etude set-up
– Master set-up
– Bridges
– Soundposts
– Fingerboards
– Top-nuts
– Pegs

– Tailpieces
– Cello endpins
– Posture pegs
– Baroque bridges
– Stamm, Aubert, Despiau bridges
– Chin rests

Find out more about instrument fittings here

– Strings
– Sound-post adjustment
– Tail-piece adjustment
– Wolf note elimination

– Rehairs
– Eyelets
– Thumb leathers
– Lappings
– Faceplates
– Replacement slides
– Pearl eyes
– Straightening and Recambering

Our Workshop Team

Our workshop is staffed by a small team of formally trained violin makers with many years of restoration experience both in Australia and internationally. The ‘team’ literally work as a team, usually engaged in individual workpieces but often coming together throughout the day to discuss the various aspects of a complex restoration or to assist each other when two hands just aren’t enough.

The wealth of combined experience our luthiers have gained working on many fine, early Italian Masters and great instruments from the classical and modern eras, has instilled an acute sense of conservation into the approach and working practices employed in our repair and restoration projects. This approach is highly appreciated by the many fine musicians who entrust their precious instruments to our care.

The workshop is dedicated to the repair and restorations of some of our own fine violins, violas and cellos as well as setting-up new instruments and bows for our showroom.

We are pleased to offer these restoration services to the playing public and can offer an appraisal and obligation free quotation if you would like to book an appointment.

We will also make a point of finding the time to assist our regular customers with a rapid turnaround for occasional emergency repairs. Please feel free to book an appointment or to contact for assistance

In addition to the precision setting-up work previously mentioned, we are always here to provide simple maintenance issues such as fitting new strings or rehairing bows for clients.

For complete restorations, the conservation of existing fabric lies at the heart of our practices so any such restoration is carefully studied and discussed before any work commences.

Common workshop services

Typical maintenance procedures such as making tuning pegs turn smoothly, reshaping fingerboards to the correct profile or rehairing a bow can turn practice from an impossible challenge into a pleasure! Learn more about our common services . . .

Complex Restorations

For complete restorations, the conservation of existing fabric lies at the heart of our practices so any such restoration is carefully studied and discussed before any work commences.

Some of these more complex restoration tasks might include:

Grafting complete heads onto new necks or, where part of the head is irreparably damaged, grafting just the scroll to a new pegbox
Making and fitting any new consumable parts such as a new fingerboard or tuning pegs
Removing and refitting existing necks where they have been misaligned or fitted at an inappropriate angle

Removing the top or back plates from the body to repair crack damage or fit new bassbars
Removing distortion from top or back plates where the stresses of many years of string tension have pushed or pulled the arching out of its intended shape
Repairing damaged ribs (sides), or in extreme cases, fitting new ribs to existing structures
Restoring badly damaged or worn varnish

Often, several of the above tasks will be involved in the reconstruction of a single instrument and complex restorations can run into several months.

Valuations

We are always happy to inspect your own instruments and bows with a view to supplying an insurance valuation. This valuation is an inexpensive service expressly intended to meet the requirements of insurance companies.

Copies of any supporting documentation you may have for the item are always helpful as this may be able to reduce research time and costs.

Make a booking to begin the process or feel free to call us if you have any questions to concerns. When it comes to keeping your instrument safe we are always happy to help.

*Please note, we do not value, pass comment or carry out condition reports on the property of third parties.