23/01/2025
Howdy, many people who know me as Warren J Fordham as in some books and on my 1979 Churchill Fellowship Certificate, or as Warren J Nolan-Fordham more recently. I have now put my name back to what it should have been biologically to Warren J Nolan. I am proud of that so that's that out of the way.
Now while I'm on changes, over the last fifty years as an internationally known violin family maker and restorer, I am announcing that I have had a gut-full of having to sort out instrument carnage and damage to instruments due to incompetence and ignorance. As the buck has always stopped with me to straighten this damage out. But what has tipped me over the edge this time is that several of my handmade instruments have fallen into the wrong hands and have been butchered/sabotaged instead of the owner coming back to me for the slightest of adjustments.
Here I have an example of what happened to one of my instruments! I can't find out exactly who did it, but I have several suspects in mind who's name/names I won't mention anyway as to not get tangled up in legal dramas or even involving consumer affairs. However if I ever do find who caused this vandalism I might just visit the butcher shove this sound-post where the sun don't shine!!! I have indicated how much of this sound-post was actually touching with blue carbon paper. I have been confronted by this sort of ignorant misbehaviour hundreds of times, and I have had enough.
Here are some more examples of what I have had to straighten out and in doing so I have inadvertently allowed these butchers to get away with it. I am unavailable for any reason, I will if contacted recommend a restorer/maker that will do very fine work, but please check with me first.
There are a lot of newcomers in the violin trade popping up, but what I find fascinating is that so called professional repairers, open shops and can't even cut a bridge, sound-post or nut correctly ranging through to appalling. Around AE Smith's time and earlier (some of them my teachers when I was a teenager and on) every repairer cut truly great bridges, sound-posts and re-hairs and wouldn't have got away with it otherwise.
Just look at the damage to this cello F-hole. How much bloody room do you think he needed to get in and out to practice his butcherous attempt at getting the sound-post in. However this culprit manages to jam sound-posts in the wrong spot which ironically in some cases can make it a bit easier for me to fit a new post, but has left permanent damage to the inside of the belly and tool-marks in the back devaluing the instrument permanently even when restored. An instrument with a sound-post patch is devauled significantly. People come to me from all around the world so I see no excuse not make a short enjoyable to trip to me to get the work done.
