back to fiddling.

The pursuit of a working fiddle has taken me to some interesting places. This summer it was the third floor of Lexington and Calvert, downtown Baltimore, to the Perrins’ violin shop--a bank headquarters in its former life, where now the walk-in safes in every room house spare pegs and bows. The Perrins guys gave me a nice fiddle set-up, for which I paid nice fiddle set-up rates--but still I had problems.

When, after a couple months of cranking out the five tunes I’ve learned well enough to not break your ears, my E and A pegs reverted to shameless and relentless slipping, I decided to try something else. I called Thomas Melton, whom I’d gotten wind of via the Acousticopia music shop in Annapolis.

It was a forty-five minute drive south, to a cul-de-sac at the tip of Churchton, Maryland, where the Chesapeake Bay took off in every direction but west. My sad fiddle and I walked into a cluster of houses and outbuildings where a back stair led to Melton’s second-floor shop.

Retired in name only, Thomas Melton has done well enough in construction to feed his hobby/business/obsession with violins. He also makes hand-turned wooden bowls, waterfowl decoys, and goes rockfish fishing in the Bay--interests which were all reflected in the tools and artifacts covering every spare inch of his shop.

It seemed that the Perrins guys hadn’t thought to clean out the 150+ years of rosin, oil, and peg dope which were gunking the insides of my peg holes. Melton did it, then rummaged through a drawer which must have represented a 200 year history of fiddle pegs, before finding me an E peg fat enough for my fiddle’s old holes. He noted that my chin rest was not only higher than average, but seemed to do me no good at all based on my hold, and traded me for something more suitable. I bought a shoulder rest that he had on hand, having never much liked my old standard-issue music student model, and he got me put back together and, at least for the moment, in tune.

He does it for fun, not money, which was evidenced by his charging me 25 bucks for some careful, meticulous work, and even then instructing that I should tell him if that was too much. It wasn’t. He has numerous music teachers who are both friends and customers to whom he’ll donate half and three-quarter-sized violins he’s acquired and patched up, when they have eager but needy pupils. I’m glad I met him.