Do you any of you our there play the new romanian gliga violins?

I love Gliga! I love Elida! I have had the following from them:
( i ) 15' Gems II viola for my wife to learn on; it sounds much nicer than my italian violin which cost £350 instrument only in 1980, and the viola came with a swish case and good glasser composite bow thrown in.
( ii ) Maestro Extra violin- words cannot describe how happy I am with this instrument. There are however numerous feedbacks on Elida's website plus loads of positive comments in the violin/viola/cello forums for "8notes.com" - just go to the website and do a search for the word "gliga".
( iii ) 1/32 genial £115 outfit including p&p and VAT for my son. This was a very good price and a proper violin in respect of which I have absolutely no complaints, but not particularly nicer sounding than a 1/8 suzuki I picked up from the newspaper. I now think it is worth going for a Gems II over a genial if you can afford it. Liz (supported by her husband David) at Elida is extremely honest and happy to chat by telephone over any questions at all. She takes pride in her business to the extent of ensuring that you get the instrument properly set up as set out on her website. The instruments are posted to you in mega fat bubble wrap inside a very good case, and won't arrive damaged. If you are not happy with the instrument you can simply return it as long as you pay the postage (I think both ways).

I wish I could shout about this firm from the rooftops - when I was in the University of Warwick Symphony Orchestra 12 years ago there was a very settled amount you had to pay to get an instrument of a certain quality - Gliga are now providing the sort of instruments which used to be totally unaffordable at prices which are entirely affordable. I wish everybody in Britain at low grade levels could trade in their ropey instruments for a Gliga Gems because the experience would be so different I think the availability of these affordable gorgeous instruments would encourage more people to carry on and join orchestras and chamber groups instead of giving up in the belief that stringed instruments are inherently scratchy and unpleasant.

good luck with the music,

David

i have a gliga!! possibly, no actually it is, the BEST violin i have ever had!! unfortunately don't get to play it much cos main studies are piano and percussion but i do play it in orchestras!! such a lovely instrument and so well crafted!

Finally some people that play the gligas. Hooray.... such a good instrument yet there are not many violinist out there that have heard of them.

Yes Elida is brillant... very good experience with them. Feel like we should spread the word.

Did you get a gliga frumpybabes? What sort? What do you think of it?

O wow, glad i found this forum

We don't pay these people, honest!!!!

Liz

OK, just to show that I do indeed put my money where my mouth is

I play a 15 inch Gliga Maestro viola with Zyex strings, not bad at all for a 15 inch. I prefer it to my 1978 Reinhold Schnabl which is worth about four times as much anyway. Also a Gliga Gama violin with Evah Pirazzi strings, though since that is presently in dock for a new bridge, at the moment i'm playing this:





I only play violin in church, perhaps that's just as well, I can't see it going down too well in a diploma exam!!

Liz

Wow that's blue!

Sure is!

The only trouble is, it's great for playing happy songs but rather less appropriate for anything sad. I can't see me using it in church on Good Friday for example!!

We're thinking of getting some pink butterfly ones in for little girlies for Christmas

Liz

Come on Liz!

Show us the back of your Maestro Viola!

Pleeeeeeeeese

wow!! what a fantastic violin! so...blue? and the butterflies are really cute!!

QUOTE (elidatrading @ Sep 6 2004, 10:50 AM)

We're thinking of getting some pink butterfly ones in for little girlies for Christmas

ohh, ohh, ohh!! can i have one!! . nah! i love my gliga!!

It IS a Gliga! They do some very, um, interesting patterns. The male version of peahens (this board won't let me post the name it just puts ### in!!!), dalmatians, tigers, cows, leaves, flowers, you name it ... we even had one customer order a violin with his family crest on the back!

OK Zoda, i'll put up the viola pics when I've found them ... don't hold your breath though!

Liz

i have purchased three gliga instruments in the past quarter; the craftmanship, finish and quality control of all three are outstanding, and among the many instruments these workshops produce it is easy to select outstanding visual aesthetic for the price. tonally, my experience has been:

(a) a beautiful 1/4 size genial violin follows the laws of physics (i.e. sounds pretty awful)
(b) a 15 inch gems 1 viola has proved outstanding value: almost too resonant, with a reasonably convincing viola timbre for its size
© a maestro gliga violin, a powerful and challenging instrument when strung with evah p. (i subsitute the infeld e string for a sweeter tone). i prefer the tone & less forced playability of my old german instrument, which is of comparable current price, but the much greater power of the gliga promises very well for the period of adjustment and playing in.

approximate prices in dollars were (a) 100 (b) 400 © 1700
and the amateur/student would do well to take seriously the extraordinary value of the gems 1 & gama lines.

I'm convinced the Gems 2 plays just as well as the Gems 1.

Liz

>>I'm convinced the Gems 2 plays just as well as the Gems 1.

you're in an excellent position to know, Liz.

difficult not to get seduced by the superior maple as you move up the line (always presuming blue butterflies aren't your thing ;-) ) --- now here's a similar question for you: from what you have seen, are the maestros inherently superior; have they perhaps been given more attention in setup? or is one paying a (very justified) premium for the aesthetic quality of the wood?


another remark: returning to violin playing after many years, i was surprised by the quality of low-end violins (and you have found yourself a gem of a line to retail), but even more so by the huge improvement in strings. you could do a monty python skit on the gut srings i had to learn on fifty years ago: their tuning would go off from global warming.

mike

>>from what you have seen, are the maestros inherently superior; have they perhaps been given more attention in setup? or is one paying a (very justified) premium for the aesthetic quality of the wood?


I don't find the Maestros vastly superior. Sometimes they are a little brighter, and generally they project a little more. The signature and certificate account for part of the price too.


>>another remark: returning to violin playing after many years, i was surprised by the quality of low-end violins


Absolutely. It's only about ten years since Chinese violins purchased from non-specialist shops were literally unplayable. The first new Chinese violin we got in when we started selling excited us hugely and we couldn't believe it when we found that others were BETTER: i thought that one was really exceptional simply because the bridge fitted and the tuning pegs worked!


>> (and you have found yourself a gem of a line to retail)

too right! Which just shows how very unadventurous most of the British music industry is. We could hardly believe it when we found that no-one else was selling them! It's the same with the clarinets and flutes we sell.


>> but even more so by the huge improvement in strings. you could do a monty python skit on the gut srings i had to learn on fifty years ago: their tuning would go off from global warming.

Absolutely! trouble is, there are so many strings out there now that experimenting with all of them costs an arm and a leg even if you're in the trade!

Liz

Can I chip in on the Maestros.

Liz is my guru, and I accept unhesitatingly from her that there is not much difference in sound between a brand new Gama and a brand new Maestro. I have a Maestro (Extra) but have never seen or heard a Gama. I bought the Maestro (Extra) in the full knowledge of Liz's above views as set out on her website. I have a theory, and it is only a theory, that time will show a greater than cosmetic difference for one reason only - the cut of wood used for the back of the violin. Looking at various write ups about Carpathian Maple, also known as curly sycamore (eg the Time magazine article on Gligas) something like one in a thousand of these trees has a disease which causes wild fluctuations in seasonal growth and therefore density. For some reason these fluctuations cause the wood to be extraordinarily springy and therefore resonant. Two independent and striking features of the back of my Maestro are firstly the curliness of the grain itself, and secondly a very pronounced "flaming effect" which does not follow the curly grain, but apparently arises from the varnish having soaked differently into areas of different density. It is clear that Gliga has selected visually more striking wood for the back of his Maestros, but my guess is that cosmetic bonus may in fact be an indication of more resonant wood, perhaps from the rarest and therefore more expensive cuts of wood. I love my violin with a passion, but it does occur to me that if I were a professional performer, I may sometimes need to get more volume from the higher notes on the E string. It may be that the scope for development from new in that direction is greater on the Maestro than on the Gama - that's just a guess. At the prices in question it was a "punt" I was willing to take. I'm not sure where his premiums for "Bird's Eye Maple" and "One piece back" fit into the cosmetic/ more than cosmetic debate since I have found no clear indication anywhere that those instruments sound any better at all.

I will carry on zoda's rant about Elida and Gligas.

I have just bought a Gliga from Elida. Liz was amazingly patient with all my questions (and there were a lot) both over the email and the phone. I order the violin late on Monday night. It arrived by Wednesday afternoon!
Beautiful violin together with a selecton of five bows for a trial period.

The violin is *gorgeous*! Both in tone and in looks. The tone has improved each day. It was already sounding beautiful the second day after just an hour's playing the day before, but today it sounded like a completely different one (i.e. like someone swopped it for a £5000 violin while I was not looking). I was amazed. I wish I could put it down to my technique improving, in which case I would catch up with David Oistrakh and Anne-Sophie Mutter by Christmas, but sadly, the credit goes to the Gliga.

The sound is so deep, rich, mellow and lush, it somehow seems so much easier to play than the old violin which was on loan from the music school. String crossings are easier, and even just hitting the right notes, the intonation is so much better. I was on it for 4 1/2 hours today without even realising it, and considered ditching piano practice to continue playing on it, and piano is my primary instrument which I find hard to miss any practice on!

The bows were fantastic as well. Very easy to handle and today I could tell very distinct characteristics of tone (the brightness, breadth, warmth, focus, power, fullness, mellowness etc etc etc) of all the bows under the ear. The only trouble I have now is deciding which I like most because they are all wonderful in their own way!

As zoda said, I wish I could shout to all the violinists around that Gliga are amazing and Elida is fab to deal with. I am so completely and utterly satisfied with the violin I just want to play it all day long.

You carry on taking over, Chopininoff! I was just getting a bit short of cyber - breath!

Interesting what you say about string crossings being easier. I would have expected a better violin to sound nicer, but not help you to play better. However against expectations, I found the same sort of thing as you with triple-stopping. One of my perennial pieces that I can't play but I still get out and do bits of 15 years after buying it is "Praeludium and Allegro". The triple stopping near the end of that used to be a real chore, and if anything I've let things lapse for years since then, but it just sounds so much clearer now it seems to improve your playing. Ditto intonation - the clearer sound gives you more confidence.

I've hit a bit of a dilemma though! I've been experimenting with different E strings. The last one I tried was Eudoxa (gut core) which had a glorious singing tone, but sounded like it might not be "bright" enough to sound clearly above other instruments eg in a quartet. I've just put on Evah Pirazzi, and that's got all the brightness you could want, which I think is a good counterbalance to the naturally dark Gliga sound, but whilst lovely in its own right, it just doesn't have the same magical singing quality of the Eudoxa. I've sent off for the Pirastro Olive Gold E, which is supposed to combine the beauty of the Eudoxa with a more powerful tone, but I've read that the open E whistles! Actually I can't wait to find out - the whole process is just a real excuse to luxuriate in this violin.

I'll get chucked off here if you two go on like that ;-)

Seriously, if anyone is interested, we have just today got up some sound files. There's a teacher who sends lots of pupils our way and we got her to record some of our violins and violas (including Gliga of course but not exclusively Gliga).

One viola we recorded was abnormally bad and one was incredibly, though not abnormally, good, just flukes with the instruments (I should have checked them before we all made the trip to the church where the recordings were done). Occasionally we get an instrument that has been in the store, or in Gliga's workshop, for 18 months or so, and they seem to mature in storage and sound simply amazing.

Anyway the soundfiles are here:

soundfiles

Liz

Aaaaarrrrgh!

The soundfiles all sound the same to me!

I really think you've got to play one of these instruments to know what it sounds like.

Still, well done to your teacher mate- she's a bit good isn't she! And very well disciplined not to start throwing in wacky variations by the time she was playing the same thing for the twentieth time!

By the way I've got the Pirastro Olive Gold E on now, and it seems to me like the final piece in the jigsaw with the Zyex GDA, that combination seems made for this Gliga. The Evah Pirazzi is a good string, but by comparison with the Olive, it sounds shrill. The Olive is 95% as gorgeous as the Eudoxa, but much louder and more brilliant. It made a noticeable difference in orchestra. (PS I've read somewhere that you shouldn't use gut strings with an adjuster, but it doesn't seem to have caused a problem here, and indeed the string I ordered has a ball end which seems made for an adjuster - also I think the Gligas come set up with 4 adjusters, and Liz had to re-set mine up without adjusters on the GDA because of the high tension in the Zyex.)

Funny that, I can tell a definite difference in the soundfiles here.

No the Gligas don't come with four adjusters, its just we usually end up putting them on for people

Liz

maybe its just my crumbling laptop.

I`ve just got my first violin. Might be leaving it a bit late at 43yrs of age! Anyway it`s a Gliga Gama and I`m really pleased with it. I don`t even read music yet (but have started today)! So you can imagine the sounds I`m producing. Managed to scrape out a couple of melodies and if I can stop the bow from bouncing I think it will sound quite nice.

Thanks Liz

PS: I`ve read most players change the E (Dominant) for a different make. What effect does this have?

Good luck with the violin, Jinxter! When you've learnt some notes, see if there's a local fun level orchestra you can join - that's the most rewarding way to keep yourself motivated.

If you've just started playing I'm not sure you need to fiddle about with different strings too much - Dominant are good quality strings and true to their name dominate the market - I think that is partly because they were the first string to combine an excellent ability to stay in tune with a non metallic sound somewhat comparable to gut. I did Grade VI on them and used them throughout school and university without giving any thought to anything else. I am aware that my current phase of "experimenting with strings" may have been a bit anoraky, although it's over now because I've found what I want.

I have seen it said (admittedly by a gut string maker!) that the choice of string contributes as much to the sound as the violin does. Liz kindly put Zyex strings on my violin at my request as I had read someone raving about them on 8notes forum. I have since found another thread which largely berates Zyex. I think it depends on the instrument you put them on - I was extremely happy with mine. The reason I have experimented with the E string is partly out of curiosity, reading other threads, partly because it's the cheapest string, costing 10 times less than replacing all 4 strings so I can afford to experiment with them, and partly because in a lot of ensemble work different instruments seem to get largely allocated to different "altitude bands", and the violin being the highest instrument often gets a lot of notes on the E string which need to sound clearly above the ensemble. On my particular instrument The Zyex G made a bigger sound in every way than the Zyex E, and I wanted to see if there was something more brilliant that still sounded gorgeous.

Although experimenting with different £2+ E strings is harmless fun, I think the problem just at the moment for you would be until you can play the violin and confidently bash out some sort of tune, you won't be able to make any meaningful comparison between them. The cost might not be much, but it would be a lot of fuss and bother in circumstances when your violin arrived with the world's most popular strings already on it.

Against the general stream of opinion, I believe that a nice instrument with good strings is in many ways just as important for a beginner as it is for a more advanced player, because our ability to play the violin is not the same as our ability to appreciate a lovely sound and hate a horrible sound, and a beginner playing on a horrible instrument is particularly liable to blame themself even for the aspects of sound which are due to the violin, and perhaps give up there and then. For that reason if your violin had horrible strings on it I would advise you to change them even now. However dominant are nice sounding, good quality strings which don't keep going out of tune. I would stick with them now, and experiment later if you want to.

All the best,

David

Thanks Zoda your input is much appreciated and very informative. I wasn`t about to change the E just yet, at least until my technique improves. As a "guitar dabbler" I`m aware that tonal differences vary a great deal depending on type/make of string. Just thought it sounded a little harsh and may try something else when this set needs changing. I`m really happy with my Gliga and am starting to get half decent intonation at 1st position (most of the time). I know I should be learning to read but each time I pick it up I can`t resist working out another melody! The Dominants are very stable. The violin arrived in tune (thanks Liz) and has remained so. I had to detune it so I could practice tuning up! If anyone is considering a purchase, in my opinion the Gligas are superb.

On Wednesday just gone I went to the Liverpool Phil's open rehearsal at Philharmonic hall where you get to sit on stage and rehearse with members of the Phil. We did 5 Klee pictures, Adagio from Spartacus, and Finlandia. It wasn't the whole Phil who turned up, but there were a good number of players in each section and they move around at various points so you can sit next to different people. Apparently the players aren't payed for this, they do it out of public spirit, and they were without exception really friendly and not at all scary (apart from how good they were). It was a great experience and good fun.

On my way out of the hall, having packed my violin away, one of the second violinists from the Phil asked me what violin I had - When I told him it was a Gliga he smiled and said something along the lines of "I wondered as much". He told me he had recently bought himself a Gliga viola from a Romanian man at the Llangollen Eisteddfod who had only the one viola to sell.

I took my violin back out and gave it to him and he had a little play, and one of the other violinists came over and asked what it was, and he started to tell them about Gliga and said "they're supposed to be one of the best new violins you can get".

It would be wrong to say they seemed shocked, stunned and falling over themselves at the sound of the violin - in fact the player just gave me my violin back and told me to get my bow re-haired. However I was rather pleased about the interest shown in my little fiddle, and also for the opportunity to see it in the hands of a real pro.