ABOUT

I've always wanted to try gut violin strings, actual strings made out of twisting and dried animal gut. For context, modern violin family strings are most commonly made of sythetic materials or steel wrapped in a winding of aluminum, silver, or steel again. This is relatively recent, steel string being around for a little over a century and synthetic strings being around for around half a century (NOT A HISTORIAN THOUGH). Gut strings might just be the way the violin should sound

Before changing I checked the areas the string comes into contact with parts of the violin: nut, bridge, pegs, tailpiece. The nut has relatively good slope but can be improved as the strings "kink" sharply in some areas stressing the windings. This will improve the flow of the strings from the nut grooves into the pegs making tuning easier. Also the grooves are slightly too narrow, pinching the strings and make smooth pitch changes with the pegs a little annoying

The tailpiece will need minor work. The current fine tuner is a Hill style (left), which I prefer, but the new set of strings have a ball end which is not removable. I'll be switching to a Wittner style tuner (right). The Stradpet titanium tuner (middle) would be my preferred choice as it can accept both a ball end or loop end and is ridiculously light, but it requires more work to mount to the tailpiece then I am willing to do right now

Carefully sloping the nut grooves and adjusting the groove widths

After the work on the grooves, a light application of Hill paste is added the the pegs. In combination with winding the strings against the peg box properly, I've never had issues with my violins' tuning stability. At this stage I will be changing the strings one at a time starting from the E-string, and going down to the G-string

Gut strings typically have a loop tied at the end. This needs to be attached to the tailpiece in some way. This tailpiece's grooves looked to be narrow enough to hold with just the knot, however I wanted to make sure there would be no doubt they would hold. So I used an alternative way which has the string threaded through it's own knot and out towards the bridge

Here you can also see the Wittner fine tuner installed. It's much bulkier and heavier, which will effect the sound. If I really like the Eudoxa E-string I'll keep it. But if not, I'll change back to a plain steel E-string with a Hill fine tuner

All Done! Now to wait for the gut to settle/stretch. It took roughly 2 days if I had to guess. The sound is wonderful, there is a roughness/texture that I've never felt with synthetic or steel strings. Also gut strings revealing weak bowing technique is really true. Under too much pressure they just start "crunching", and you really need to watch the contact point and the bow speed