The violin shop called yesterday, and said that Aunt Jane was coming along, but the man doing the repairs had discovered some more work that needed to be done, and did I want them to go ahead with that? I said I’d come down and we’d talk about it.
I went to the shop after work, and was ushered to the back room where Jane sat in her unstrung glory on a rack with several other basses being worked on. The repairman showed me where he’d had to clean out a patch of dry rot at the junction of the neck and body, and described how he’d made those repairs. Then he got down to issues, and showed me how the bridge had been installed wrong at some time in the past, and needed to be replaced if her strings weren’t to drag and buzz on the fingerboard. The obstacle to this was the price: another $300 of labor to carve and set the new bridge.
I don’t have another $300. Had it not been for my MIL’s Christmas check, I wouldn’t have got this far, and all that money is fully committed. So I told them another $300 right now was right out, and was there anything else we could do that wouldn’t cost so much, yet leave her in playable shape? That question started a new three-way discussion, and ended with them agreeing to try inserting a set of adjuster blocks under my current bridge to bring it into line. Doing that would cost another $150, and I think I can find a credit card with that much room on it.
While we were talking about options on the bridge, one of the guys ventured an opinion that once we’re through, even as rough as she is cosmetically she’d be worth $1,500 to $2,000 here, and maybe more in other parts of the country where the demand is higher. Since all the money I have in her personally is this repair, I think that’s a fair return on the investment. The shop has promised to have her ready by the end of this week.
