Violin for grade4 and above

[MomRose12]

Hi all,
DD (10yrs old) is doing her grade3 exams next month. She has been playing violin for over 5 years now (started doing grade exams only last year). She auditioned for a local orchestra and wlll be starting there next term. She currently has a 3/4 size cheapo violin that we borrowed from a friend. I’m thinking of getting her a really nice violin. Do I upgrade now or wait for her to grow into a full size violin?

How much should I be spending on it? I can go up to £1500, but I don’t want to spend so much if it’s not necessary at this stage. Also, please can anyone recommend nice violin shops near Bromley/London where she can try before buying?

DS1 is 11 and doing his Grade 6. We’ve just got him a nice antique 3/4 violin which was about £2.5k but before that he had one from Stringers that was about £500/£600. That was perfectly fine for Grade 3+ IMO.

Guivier was the place we got his antique one from.

Her teacher recommended Stentor Student. I think he thought that was a decent upgrade over her current violin. Is Stentor good enough until finishing grade5 (around 1.5years)?
Should I be looking at buying a new violin or used ones? Do used ones sound better?

Where are you based, OP? I could ask OH for you ....

I’m in London (Bromley - close to Kent)

Stentors mid range models definitely good enough for grade 5 and are very reasonably priced. You won't lose loads on resale either; worth it for a couple of years.

Thank you. Would you recommend any particular model in Stentors? Is Student-2 good? What about stentor-conservatoire?

Do old violins sound better?

Bumping for responses

I went to grade 7 on a stentor. Absolutely fine and dandy. Would wait till she needs a full size though as no point in spending twice for the same thing really.

Conservatoire is overkill for grade 5 imo, student 2 is fine, and the 1 is plenty for grade 3. But the price difference isn't loads so get whichever looks the prettiest if you can afford it!

Thanks CrazyFrog and CrazyCrunk

Would Gliga Gama be an overkill too at this point?

I think I will go with Stentor Student2 for now.

DS1's is from 1880, it's French. There's no doubt it sounds miles better than my pretty bog-standard new one, which was I think about £1200ish.

We wanted to wait until he needed a full size for obvious reasons, but he is refusing to have a growth spurt so we got him a good one now, so he can do his Grade 6 on it. We will be able to trade it in and upgrade once he's ready for a full size so the additional outlay won't be that much.

Having said that, if he was on his Grade 3 we would not have bothered. It's totally unnecessary to spend loads at that stage IMO. Follow her teacher's advice and then get something better once she needs a full size.

I did my Grade 8 viola on a £500 instrument perfectly fine. No way could my family have afforded anything else. But as DS1's teacher helpfully said to me when I pointed that out to her, if you've never tried a good antique instrument you wouldn't know what you are missing, and to be fair, now I've tried DS1's, I have to acknowledge she is right. It's loads better than mine, and we are lucky that we can afford it for him. now I want one for myself