MV18/ 33 Circa 2006 Jay Haide L’Ancienne 4/4 violin. Sound sample.

Two piece back of medium curl maple. Front of tight grain spruce with matching neck and scroll. Rosewood pegs. Ebony fingerboard and Wittner Ultra tailpiece.

Length of back: 35.3 cms. String length 33 cms. Stop length: 19.5 cms.

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.