AS01/ 81A Pre-owned Circa 2011 Jay Haide L’Ancienne 4/4 cello.

While all Jay Haide cellos are hand-made of quality seasoned maple and spruce and have a tone quality and workmanship normally found in instruments costing much more, the á l’ancienne model cellos are made by more senior violin makers with finer quality aged wood for musicians requiring the best tone quality.

Back in 1992, Jay Ifshin, master violin maker and owner of Ifshin Violins, in Berkeley. California became frustrated with the inconsistent quality of the new instruments. He felt that it would be possible to establish a workshop to make consistently high quality instruments that he could offer at a more attractive price than anything he could purchase through a supplier or even directly from the maker. Haide Lin had been Jay’s shop foreman in Berkeley for several years. He  trained as a violin maker in Guangzhou, China and was already a master-maker, when he arrived in America.. The name Jay Haide was chosen as a combination of the founder’s names.

The Jay Haide workshop is organized very much like the great workshops in Mirecourt, France in the mid 19th to mid 20th centuries. Companies such as Thibouville-Lamy, Laberte, Collin-Mezin and others were famous for high quality stringed instruments  and in their workshops  individual craftsmen were highly-skilled specialists at tasks such as carving scrolls, bending ribs and varnishing etc.