Glasser Carbon Composite violin or viola - instrument only. Acoustic. Vegan friendly!
A carbon violin at a price reachable by an amateur or even a good student? Yes! If you take your instrument into environments that would be likely to harm a wood instrument, perhaps this one is for you. Here is the official description:
Glasser Carbon Composite violins are revolutionary new instruments. Glasser Bows has long been a world leader in developing advanced products with the use of composite materials. Glasser Carbon Composite instruments are the latest development. No animal products are used.
Built to last, they look and sound great. Glasser's patented design makes for an instrument with a wonderful tonal quality with durability most instruments could never match.
These instruments come with Planetary fine tuning pegs, a Glasser fine tune tailpiece and Larsen strings.
Here is a clip from the Rio Olympics arts events of a Glasser violin (a custom made one, but it will give you an idea of what this company can do) - start about 27.15. That is an electric acoustic outfit which is also available - see separate listing.
Here is a recording made of the acoustic prototype outfit. This one was made by a Grade 5/6 player. One of the peculiarities of carbon fibre is that they sound different at a distance - in the same way as an electric instrument does. You don't have the resonance of wood under your ear.
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0996/1626/files/glasser.mp3?2313399533449770850
Here is a video review by John Timpany, a fiddler - again this is a recording of the prototype. It is necessary to point out that the tailpiece used for this recording is not the Glasser tailpiece - I swapped it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FNTr6RVPKM
John's website may well be of interest to folk players, it is here
There is another interesting review, including a sound sample, here
http://blog.feinviolins.com/2017/05/glasser-carbon-composite-violin-review.html
Andrew Glasser has confirmed that no animal products are used in the making of these instruments.
