My fiddle got DAMAGED while getting Repaired

Holy shite! Vandalized. How f’n insulting. I can’t believe he handed this back to you…”Here you go! All done!”

The amount of sloppiness on an instrument you spent so much effort into is heartbreaking... Hoping you will have good energy for the repairs and exciting projects once it's playable again!

I'm so sorry and I really hope you can get it repaired properly.

Oh my, Emelie! Our entire workshop cries over this. Please don't think bad about all the luthiers, it is a peculiar action... The whole Krakow crosses fingers for your repair, the bright side about wood is that almost each damage can be reversed ❤

Wow, that sucks! Hope you can return it to a satisfying condition, perhaps even better, since it’s your 2nd rebuild.

Ouch ouch ouch. That's a bit surreal... Sorry to see that! Good news is that a good luthier will be able to mend the oversize holes and fix all the dents. We've seen magic stuff like that done by our friend in Saint Petersburg - and pretty quickly, too. Still sucks you'll have to pay for it double or do the work yourself. I wonder if it was actually a random apprentice doing the job...

As a repair person myself, I'm so sorry you experienced this! The original head definitely looks salvageable. There are several ways to reinforce it to withstand playing tension. It won't be perfect like when it was first made, but I kind of like being able to see the history of an instrument through it's repairs. Please don't give up! Find someone who is willing to listen to your concerns and work with you, you know your instrument best 😊

My heart is dearly riddled with how someone can damage such a precious thing! Oh, that is an awful stroke for the heart to have Emelie!

I recently had a repair done on my fiddle (that thankfully went well) but I can just imagine getting the instrument back after weeks or even months of anxiety in thinking “what if something doesn’t go well?” and then getting back your instrument completely butchered by the luthier. I hope you get this låtfiol repaired so that you can continue to make memories with this instrument

😢 that’s so sad. I can feel this. I Hope you get this lovely fiddle repaired soon.

Really painful to see... hope you manage to repaire it soon.

I wish you good luck in your work. 👏👏

This is so sad. I'm sorry this happened.

Wow! That's terrible. Here's to hoping you can get it working. So heartbreaking.

Que triste, lo lamento mucho. Que poco amor por el instrumento por parte del luthier😞. Animo!!!

Oh dear, this looks terrible. I'm glad you're feeling able to work on the repairs yourself now and I hope you're able to get it into a good condition soon. It's a special instrument you've made, and I'm grateful that you've posted the last videos of how you made it and how it sounds - information seems so sparse about this instrument. Thanks to you I am thinking of attempting a conversion myself, though at this point I've not got much further than just thinking about it (well also I have been building some other instruments, and also managed to source an old violin that I can use as a starting point). Anyway, I'm sorry to see what's happened, and good luck with it.

"No pegs for pigs." -Ancient wisdom

"worth" is something you cannot measure. An inexpensive instrument that you love and is unique, is still something you love. I hate to see butchering like that! Holey Buckets, that luthier needs his tools taken away until he gains some expertise. Sorry for your grief💔🎻

I'm always scared of letting anyone near my violin. I wouldn't ever trust that person to do anything any more, and probably wouldn't even speak to them again if that was my fiddle. I hope you can find someone who can restore it and help you.

Sadly, the person you trusted was not competent. I'm a violin maker of 30 years experience, and I would have suggested grafting a new neck onto the original scroll. The pegs also look to have flats on them, so they would have needed shaping properly ( i.e smaller) with the correct taper, which would make tuning much easier. This is all very straightforward for an experienced craftsman, but it would be quite expensive.