WITTNER 918131 Tailpiece for Full Violin (4/4 Size), incl. 4 String Adjuster Made in Germany (918111P)

I bought this tailpiece so I could add fine tuners on all four strings on a violin I was setting up for my niece (an adult beginner). It's well made of composite materials except for the screws, which seem to be aluminum. It's well made, and everything works as it should.Installation is straightforward if you've changed a tailpiece on a violin before. I mark the location of the bridge with small bits of masking tape before loosening the strings. I'm also careful to keep the violin on its back and not knock it around while doing this so as not to have the soundpost fall. Also, the tailgut should be adjusted so the string after length (the distance between the bridge and the tailpiece should be about 1/6 the open string length. If you're not confident about being able to do this, you might want to have a luthier or violin shop perform this job for you.As far as tonal changes, I can't really hear any on this particular violin (a Gliga Gama). I weighed the Wittner tailpiece against the original ebony tailpiece with one fine tuner and the Wittner, at 20.5 grams is 1 gram heavier than the original tailpiece.

This is for the player who likes fine tuners on all their strings and who doesn't mind a (small and possibly imaginary) loss of tonal color. I got this for my favorite "$2.00 fiddle&#34, a late 19th century Hopf that I had rebuilt about 30 years ago. This fiddle settled in a decade ago and now sounds better than than anything new I've played recently. So it is a fair test bed for this tailpiece.Like I said, if there is loss of tonal color as far as I can tell it is in my imagination. This tailpiece has the the advantage of fine tuners on all the strings and since the tuners are integral it is balanced so the string length is where is should be. Plus, it seems to be sturdier than those fine tuners that you hook into a standard tailpiece's holes.That was written in 2018. This edit is done in 2022 to add that in 2019 I found two much better violins, made by an obscure luthier in Tennessee, who has recently passed. Since I continue to play a variety of music, including old time tunes which require retuning to AEae or DDAD, it was inevitable that I'd migrate my two best fully adjustable tailpieces to them. The Wittner Ultra is a remarkably good tailpiece. It actually improved the tone of these two unique violins rather than simplifying it. This can only be appreciated on a really good instrument; my old German violins are good relative to average ones that you see in jams and fiddling contests but just don't show how much the tone can be improved with one of these tailpieces. I would hope the reader would not be discouraged by lack of improvement if they put one of these on an average fiddle since the convenience will outweigh other factors. But if they're loading up a good violin with four fine tuners so as to easily play nonstandard tunings, I'd remind them that an Ultra has four fine tuners for significantly less weight penalty without shortening string afterlength.

I took down the original tailpiece from my new violin and replaced with this "Ultra violin tailpiece". I never had changed a violin tailpiece before and this is my first time. But at opening the parcel and took a first look of this product, I knew exactly how to deal with it.Well there is nothing much to say about the installation since it is so simple. I have to tell you why I bought this item. I bought a China-made violin. It came with a plastic tailpiece (with 4 tuners). It didn't seem to be fragile and the tuner worked fine. But I believe it would be wise to have a SECOND tailpiece.Then I hunted for a tailpiece ( and other violin accessaries) in Amazon. I was in 2 minds. Ofcourse I would like my new violin to be in all woods. An ebony one seemed to be a very attractive choice. But after I read the reviews here, on wood, metal and platic models, I made up my mind to take this one.Though reviewers here said the product to be "light". But it is not as light as I had imagined. It looks great on my China-made violin. It is sturdy. gives me the confidence that it won't break under my nose. Its fine-tuners works well. It 's in every way better than the one that comes along with my violin. I don't give it a 5 stars just because that honor is reserved for some tailpieces costing 10 or 20 times more expensive than it.

Being new to violins, I was forced to do a lot of research on violin accessories and their uses. One of the changes I made to my violin was to remove the old ebony tailpiece and install this one. The old one was very nice but it was too long with the string tension adjusters installed. One of the first things I learned about my violin was that the distance between the tail and bridge needed to be 1/6 th of the length of the strings. This was not possible due to the length of the ebony tail with adjusters installed.This tail is shorter than the old one by about half an inch. It has incorporated the adjusters so that the free point of the wire at the anchor is about an inch shorter than the other tail with extended adjusters. Long story short...an extra inch of space to make your 1/6th of wire length between tail and bridge. On a 4/4 violin, the string length between bridge and tail should be 5.5cm or 2-5/32 inch. This measurement is not a hard and fast rule. Depending upon the violin, it should be a bit shorter or longer. this change in distance would be pretty small though. Less than a few millimeters.So, The need for a shorter tail (on the violin) was the main reason for this purchase. It worked out great.The added benefit of lighter materials was just a bonus.The other changes I made were a better set of strings. The helicore with wound E worked very well for me. The addition of a new bridge actually made the most dramatic change. I could get into why, but it would be a 10 page essay. I chose a Teller brand bridge off of amazon that was reviewed well. It took some carving but was surprisingly successful.