Dave, With respect to your comment about a violin being cheaper than the other instruments. Be careful with a cheap violin. My wife taught the instrument for some years and she found that some of the real cheapos were impossible to set up properly and would never make a good sound. Some of them have bumpy fingerboards which makes it very difficult, even for a good player, to get proper intonation. They are a dirty trick to play on a kid who wants to learn an instrument. The best idea is to take somebody along who plays the instrument when you buy.

It seems that if you want to be a great concert violinist you had better start as young as you can; but hell, I know someone who started at the age of 50 and now at the tender age of 62 is playing in amateur string quartets. (He was a clarinette player before that, I'll admit, so he already knew something about music.

Murray