Violin for higher grades

[user1469360472]

Hi
What violins do you use for grade 5 and higher, how much did they cost and where did you get them?

We bought Ds's 1/2 size violin from our teacher for £300. He's had it for around a year, makes a lovely sound and he'll be taking grade 5 on it at christmas.
Dd (grade 8) has a full size that cost £1000 - we went with our teacher to a violin dealer and tried loads out until she picked the one we bought.

Thank you, Pizza the hut
As an update, we've got my daughter's violin from Elida violins. They sent three different ones for us to try out. In addition, we went to a violin shop in Orpington to try some there. In the end, the choice was down to two - a German Sandner (name sounds like a dog! Haha) at £1,000 and a Chinese handmade at £850. I have to admit, they both sounded equally good but for some reason, we preferred the Sandner as it seemed to have a little bit of a richness to the sound. Not better, just different. I'm also brainwashed into trusting anything German that's even slightly technical. What also swayed me was that the seller was happy to do a deal with the violin + case which meant the price difference was only £50.

Thank you so much to everyone for your input and recommendations and to onlymusic for recommending Elida violins. Their customer service was super.

user1469360472 thank you :)
This discussion was very useful for me too-learned something for the future, about bows, etc.
And congratulations!

Researching all your recommendations now as we are upgrading our £85 bought from amazon more than 2 years old violin(size 1/2) as it seems like her arms grew so much over the summer and she is bending a little on 1/2 now(8 and a half)

I can't recommend Cardiff Violins enough. They travel around so you don't have to be able to get to Cardiff to buy one.

Don Tatum has made some excellent violins, available to buy at C.V.

Good luck!