John- Nice guitar. I like the violin-type top overlapping the ribs.

I have a degree in music and although I no longer do it professionally I am formally trained and have worked as a professional cabinetmaker. Some of the professional projects I have made have surely taken longer than it will take to make a violin. Cost is not the issue; selection, quality, and quantity are the issues. I am unwilling to pay as much as 1000% over actual cost for someone to cut a slab of wood off from what I can carefully select myself and send it to me with an air of authority without my prior inspection and approval.

I will be making at minimum 4 concert violins. I have no problem paying for an ebony fingerboard blank, but ebony is a different matter, as it doesn't grow locally. Top quality hard maple is very abundant in my area, and over years of using it I've developed a good feel for the quality of wood we have in this area. I've had the chance to inspect probably hundreds high-end professional violins and play quite a few of them that range back to the early 19th century from around Europe and the United States, and I'm sure that the wood I can source locally is as good as the best and much better than the worst of what I have played. Some of the spruce is not nice, and many of the early European violins are made in the style of Guarneri, which in many cases leaves tool marks on the surfaces. In fact, the nicest violin I've ever played had suspect-looking spruce that I would not have used and tool marks on the top, which I never would have left, and the maple was VG but not figured. It's like reed instruments- there's an ideal reed that we all think should work well- evenly spaced grain, balanced thickness, and the right spring, but sometimes you get reeds that have none of these features that play exceptionally well. Who knows why? (reed players go through way more materials than violin makers, and I've gone through tens of thousands of reeds, so I've seen a lot of woody material) It's even different from person to person. The reeds of John Mack, considered one of the best oboists ever, are brutally ugly and I can't imagine how they even work. But, for him they do.

I'm not saying you're wrong at all. If I were a hobbyist and didn't know much about the instrument or wood there is no doubt I would buy materials from a luthier's supply. But- under the circumstances I feel that it better suits my needs to select my own lumber.

m