PS/ 152 NEW ‘Jay Haide ‘L’Ancienne’ 15.5″ viola. Magginni model. Sound sample

Two-piece maple back with medium grain and light figure. Spruce front, medium grain. Double purling on front and back. Ebony fittings with a Wittner tailpiece. ‘Antiqued’ Amber – brown varnish. Length of back: 39.4 cms. Stop length of 21.4cm. String length of 35.8 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.