Purchased mine from holly pc here on amazon. Got scammed . Came filthy, sun bleached, severely ripped case, broken bow ( was glued together). Didn't even try it out . My daughter and I were very disappointed. Save yourself the trouble and talk to your instructor about a quality instrument.

great violin, has great sound, comes with everything that you need to get started. It was perfect to wrap up and give as a gift. My daughter loves it.

We have a Palatino and it has been through 3 kids, starting of the fourth. This was a great purchase for a kid who wants to try out the instrument for a year and then move on to something else. Yes, it is not fit for a professional, but at 1/2 or 1/4 size, they don't sound as good as a full size anyway. How good of a violin does my kid need to play Mary Had a Little Lamb? I am a musician and know when to spend money on a good instrument. A first year violin player is not the time. I have no complaints about this product.

This review is for the full size 4/4 Palatino NV-450. I'm addressing some unfair negative reviews posted regarding the smaller size (1/4) of this same instrument.

Ok the first negative review is by someone who admits to not even having touched one himself. The second, I think isin't being fair.

Look, this is a beginners instrument. I bought this with 0 hours of experience playing the violin (at age 26 by the way). I bought this and started lessions with a highly reputed teacher located in the area of Berklee College of Music in Boston. The teacher had nothing but positive comments about the instrument.

It's solid spruce and maple and the pegs, fingerboard and chinrest are solid ebony. That's essentially what teachers are looking for in a student instrument. No violin "holds it's tune". That's why there's tuning pegs and fine tuners (this instrument has 4 fine tuners by the way really helping the student get accustomed to tuning). All good accoustic violins are made of wood and as such are subject to expansion and contraction in changing temperature and humidity conditions. When the wood contracts a bit, the pegs can become loose and require retuning, some peg drops can help reduce this but not eliminate it. The bridge is an average stock bridge. A student looking for an entry level instrument (like myself) hasn't often the money nor time to consult and hire a luthier to custom shave and fine tune thier bridge. I find the bridge that comes with this instrument, in it's stock condition carries the vibration from the strings to the body effectively and actually quite loud.

I will agree however that the bow it comes with has warped slightly and I'm looking for a replacement now. But heck, after two years with this instrument and a couple of sets of replacement strings, I'm more than happy with it's performance.

It's not a $10,000 violin, and doesn't claim to be. It's an entry level student voilin that I only spent about $150 on a couple years ago and have progressed quite a long way on.

In violin circles we talk about violins and VSO's. A VSO is a violin shaped object. The reputation that Palitinos have among violin teachers and players is as VSOs. There are other inexpensive brands that will give you more violin for the money like the Cremonas, but the Palatinos are pretty crummy. I know all about it because I almost bought Palatinos, but got warned against it. Others have not been so lucky.

I know what it is like to be poor and not to be able to afford a decent instrument. I know that from having struggled to learn the guitar on 15 buck stellas back in the 1960s. However, if you can possibly wait and save up two or three hundred dollars, you can get a decent enough student violin to be worth it. You will see the difference. For a new person, often the difference might be having an instrument that discourages a beginner from playing and an instrument that will get the fun of playing the fiddle or violin to be a permanent part of your life.

Unless you know about violins, don't buy one on the Net, that you haven't actually played. Find a violin teacher, or someone from the many online groups for beginning violinists--I recommend Yahoo's Beginning Adult Violinist group which has thousands of members all over the US and beyond--who can give you advice, go with you to a store or help you make an online purchase.

Here are a few tips I have learned since I first started buying and playing inexpensive violins in the past few years.

Setup, is very crucial for a violin's sound even for an inexpensive violin. Setup involves the placement of the bridge, what size bridge and how the sound post is properly place under the bridge, something that is hard to do an requires precision. Finding a luthier who will set up a violin for you, and perhaps put decent strings on it, can make a big difference in buying a violin at any price. For someone buying an inexpensive violin it is something relatively inexpensive that can help the sound.

Likewise, the bow is often as important to your sound as your fiddle itself. Moreover, someone with little cash can more easily move up from the 10 or 20 buck bow that comes with these cheap fiddles to a 100 buck bow, than they can move up from a 300 dollar fiddle (most things that cost less are VS0s) to a 800 or 1000 buck fiddle.

Finally, buying fiddles on ebay is even more of a trap than buying one online without advice. There are plenty of vsos up on EBay and plenty of people who are selling cheap violin sets like these as used violins for even more money.

I will repeat what I said before. Don't buy a violin simply from an Internet Ad. Find a violin teacher, or someone from the many online groups for beginning violinists--I recommend Yahoo's Beginning Adult Violinist group which has thousands of members all over the US and beyond--who can give you advice, go with you to a store or help you make an online purchase.