This violin is super cute, very well built and beautiful. I could have bought it just to put it on my livingroom shelf to look at!
Such a small instrument just can't sound very well with respect to tone. But I must say that I'm suprised about how possible it is to actually play quite good despite its tinyness. The sound is surprisingly loud and ringing, and even the G-string provides some projection (if it makes sense to mention that in this context)
The bow is rigid and extremely stiff and is a full fledged real bow with real hardware. Not a toy for sure. And this little bow actually works like a charm on my full sized violin as well. Sitting at a narrow and tight space I could actually think of using this bow my self. Not kidding! :-)
It is not easy to tell a 3 year old not to hit the fine tuners with the bow hair and when this happens, hair gets stuck and damaged quickly.
Tuning this little thing is not easy, but the fine tuners do their work even though they are so close together that it makes it a bit difficult turn, but that's the way it is. The tuning pegs were nicely set-up and works fine. Short steel strings, however make it nearly impossible to tune just using the pegs.
The tail piece gut string is too thick for this size of violin. This is not good for keeping the tuning. It does not bend well around the end peg which makes some "springy-ness" remain in the tailpiece set-up.
Since it is a Thomann product it goes through a setup procedure by the "string experts", and it shows. The instrument is well setup, pegs work fine, bridge is correctly mounted, the bow screw is greased. Only one thing to complain about which could be important for some. I don't believe that my 3 year old girl will get to a "very advanced" level on this violin :-). But if your child is a "wonder child", then the bridge is not good. It is symmetrically cut (bridge not lower at E-string). And the bridge is too flat which makes it hard to not hit other strings. And also one needs to play quite closely to the bridge because the arc of the strings becomes flat quickly.
