She graduated with honours in violin performance from the UNAM (Mexico), and holds a Master’s degree in the same discipline from the University of Montreal. Itzel discovered the art of violin making as a teenager. Itzel Ávila is a Mexican-Canadian violin maker established in Toronto, a participating member of the Oberlin Violin Makers Workshop (VSA), and the President of the Makers’ Forum since October 2020. From the summer of 2021 she now offers training and masterclasses to promising female indentifying luthiers and will shortly begin her new teaching position at Scuola di Liuteria Toscana Fernando Ferroni. She is also a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, The Churchill Trust and a recognised artisan of Homer Faber. Paris has exhibited all over the world and is proud to have her instruments played by remarkable professionals and work in collaboration with award winning artists such as Leonardo Frigo and Federico Guglielmo. Paris makes instruments 'from models' and likes to use her intuition and personal taste guide her while making and varnishing. Her great love of baroque music and history led her to retrain and specialise in Baroque builds with Maestro Fabio Chiari, and she now focuses almost exclusively on the Baroque. After focusing on repair and restoration, Paris went on the win a fellowship from the Winston Churchill Trust for her work which allowed her to travel to Florence to work alongside a group of remarkable luthiers and study the Tuscan style and history of violin making with Maestro Francesco Algieri. Fascinated by the world of lutherie after a trip to a local luthier at 16 years old, she later went on to follow her passion first as an apprenctice to Harpsichord maker and restorer Maestro Fergus Hoey, and later at the violin making school at Merton College London under the exceptional Master maker Keith Graves. I cannot get a polish on the heads, so they still look rather plasticcy on close inspection.Paris was born into a very artistic family and grew up attached to her violin which she played from a young age. When fitting them it is rather too easy to ream out the hole just bigger than you should have done - as the pegs need to be quite a firm press fit in the hole so that the little moulded splines really grip to stop them becoming loose in use. As the gearing is only 4 to 1 (4 turns of the head gives one turn of the shaft) it does not take long to wind on new strings (geared guitar tuners are usually around 1 to 16 and thin have shafts)Īs the gearing is in the head rather than the shaft, they look a bit bulkier than ebony or knilling pegs. They are not 'handed' left and right like the Knilling pegs. I have read complaints that the wittner pegs 'feel gritty' and it is true you can somehow feel the gears as they mesh, but that makes no difference to their functioning. The knilling pegs look better - nearer to ebony - and work well for me on cellos however I find the wittner pegs are more straightforward to tune on shoulder bowed instruments (violins and violas). I have tried both Wittner and Knilling planetary pegs on Violins, violas and cellos.
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