Wolf Instruments

Home
United States
The Plains, VA
Wolf Instruments

Call Directions Website Contact the business

Instrument makers in The Plains, VA specializing in early keyboards, violones, and the double bass.

10/30/2026

Our most recent 'Little Dutchy' model is finished! It's been really great to hear feedback from the players who've come through the shop and played it since it was strung up on Monday. A big thanks to Kevin Thompson for taking it out for a few days and beginning to play it in. It'll be around the shop for a few more weeks if anyone wants to come give it a whirl 👀

Barbara was in D.C. for a multi-concert, multi-instrument week, moving and tuning a combined 13 engagements in just three and a half days!

Zippi has posted up on the roll-y cart and is ready to supervise the big push to catch up on repair work!

10/23/2026

Boy, does have a lot more low notes to play! A new B-extension underway, plenty more to do, but we got to hear the first notes. The Little Dutchy has varnish, here’s a sneak peek of the scroll and extension. And Zippi is unamused at the amount of work everyone’s doing, because she requires attention!

10/21/2026

Wolf Instrument Wednesdays: Celebrating 50 Years

📆2025

Our Jubilee year arrived with a presidential inauguration. Background music for the post-inaugural luncheon in the Capitol is supplied by the Smithsonian. The museum’s director of classical music programs, Ken Slowik, provides a program played from a balcony overlooking Statuary Hall. Space is limited, so few musicians and instruments can be accommodated. He usually takes our German single harpsichord, and this year enlisted Jacob Stone to play “percussion” and help move the instrument out afterwards. Jacob got to see a lot of famous people and big-time security.

The biannual convention of the International Society of Bassists (ISB) took place in Tallahassee. We stocked an exhibition booth, but more importantly, both Tom and Jacob entered new instruments in the Makers’ Competition. They were showy in different ways: Tom’s Maggini design had a gorgeous one-piece back of European quilted ash. The bear-claw figured top was fine-grained Sitka, well-seasoned since 1965.

Jacob modified his Pallotta pattern both dimensionally and aesthetically, changing the violin corners to gamba corners. He had been introduced to playing the gamba by Ken Slowik, and then exposed to the work of viol maker Joachim Tielke. Inspired by Tielke, he designed his third bass with a staved back and ribs of cherry and poplar. With inked edges, carved motifs on the neck and pegbox, and ornamentation on a hollow scroll, it was visually stunning. It received a silver medal for tone and a certificate for workmanship – the best total of awards in the competition. It was sold by the end of the week.

By the end of the summer, we had finished restoring an English bentside spinet made by Joseph Mahoon in 1742. Barbara returned it to the Flint collection when she went to tune and service instruments for recording of duo-harpsichord pieces played by Karen Flint and Arthur Haas.

We acquired a significant amount of wood and supplies from the shop of recently deceased colleague Mark Adler. The horse trailer provided temporary storage while other space was reorganized. It was a literal investment in the future: the next 50 years to come.

10/16/2026

Afternoon sun in the show room, our current 'Little Dutchy' in the varnish room, and Zippi tuckered out in the bench room!

10/15/2026

Wolf Instrument Wednesdays: Celebrating 50 Years!

📆2024

Our bass output in 2024 was wide-ranging, starting with a G-violone (second largest in the viola da gamba family: larger than a cello, smaller than a double bass). Jessica Powell Eig asked if we would use one by Jacob Stainer in Copenhagen as a model; a drawing and specifications for the instrument are available. A very nice European spruce top was combined with curly European maple for the neck, back and ribs. Visually, we preferred “F” holes (which Stainer turned to later on) to the “C” holes of the original. Tom took a carving class to improve his skills before attempting the ”lions-head” scroll. The tongue, of course, had to be stained red.

The keyboard instrument calendar was chockablock with rentals, tunings and recordings all year. We had to subcontract concert services a few times when we were double/triple booked. It’s always nice to have Carnegie Hall hire a harpsichord for a solo concert: a poster outside the entrance happily proclaimed SOLD OUT. Despite strict rules about photos and artists’ stage time, Barbara was able to capture Mahan Esfahani in rehearsal during the day. And it’s also a great excuse for dining at the fabled Russian Tea Room right next door.

Looking for a warmer sound from our next “Little Dutchy” bass, we made the first one with a quarter-sawn poplar back and ribs. The back received a “responsive” bracing system developed by Matthew Tucker in Australia. The instrument had been playing for six days when a student of Ira Gold (owner of the original) walked in and bought it.

A near-total solar eclipse provided entertainment on a clear day. Everyone wore the required special sunglasses, including Zippi, who didn’t want to be left out.

And finally, a “summer intern” project Viennese bass was nearing completion, so Tom and Jacob decided to finish it with a baroque setup. The spalted maple in it came from a tree planted in our yard in the early 20th century. It works as a rental instrument and has been widely used by touring bassists very successfully.

10/09/2026

We're excited to be attending GMU Bass day this Sunday (10/11) as their luthier on site! We'll have tools to do minor repairs and adjustments as well as a handful of new and pre-owned instruments and bows to try out. We hope to see you there!

The new bass is almost finished being cleaned up and heading for the varnish room this weekend.

And we're not sure exactly what Zippi's doing sleeping in the middle of the entry way, but she deserves the rest!

10/08/2026

Wolf Instrument Wednesdays: Celebrating 50 Years!

📆2023

After nearly a quarter-century of anticipation, we delivered a fortepiano to The Juilliard School. In the late ‘80s we made them a harpsichord, but that was for “early” music that wasn’t part of the “mainstream” curriculum. But any piano, even from the end of the 18th century, intruded on the classical repertoire, in the territory of Juilliard’s modern piano department. We were asked for a fortepiano proposal in 2000; by the time there was another serious request in 2016, a degree in Historical Performance had been funded, with its own faculty. Our price hadn’t quite doubled by then, but a donor had to be found, and by the time it was all approved, covid arrived to send everybody home. We started to catch up on shop work during covid, and Jacob proved he could work on keyboard instruments as well as basses. We all signed the keywell, and Zippi managed the pre-delivery photo session.

Less than two months later, we trekked to Ann Arbor for the biannual convention of the International Society of Bassists (ISB). It’s a good connection for the bass clientele when it’s driveable (different location each time), so we exhibited. Jacob had finished his second “personal” instrument (the Pallotta design) and entered it in the Maker’s Competition.

After ISB, Jacob recommended we establish a basic social media presence to promote the bass business. It would help showcase basses available on our website, and he’d get it started by the end of the summer. By Labor Day the first post appeared at Wolf Instruments, and Zippi’s fame was launched. After three years, it definitely makes a difference!

We also found ourselves with an inventory of “extras”: a neck from a 5-string bass turned into to a 4-string; a second back from a thick re-sawn piece; a top from a bass made two decades earlier. Just a bunch of leftovers. Jacob wanted to learn how to laminate ribs, so we went through the process and suddenly had all the parts for an unplanned bass! When finished, it was signed by Thomas Lupot: “Les Restes”.

10/02/2026

We got to hear (if only briefly) the first sounds out of the next Little Dutchy bass! We're finishing edgework, making the c-extension, and setting it up "in the white" before the final push of varnish.

Repair work continues with a couple of scroll/neck breaks fixed and going out... and a few more to replace them...

A visit from a fall frog, and Zippi making sure all the work gets done!

09/30/2026

Wolf Instrument Wednesdays: Celebrating 50 Years!

📆2022

A major project during the covid shutdown was a uniquely versatile instrument for Shanti Nachtergaele. She was getting a doctorate from McGill University with a dissertation about historical bass tunings, which needed to be demonstrable. We made a bass patterned on 18th-century Viennese models that had two interchangeable E-flat necks (to allow for frets), two tailpieces, three bridges, three nuts, and 14 different gut strings. This allowed her to play in Viennese tuning with frets, 4-string modern tuning without frets, and multiple 3-string tunings. The 4-string tailpiece accommodates 3-string placement, and one of the tuners is easily demountable. Shanti got very facile at re-assembling the setup to order! The sides are flamed maple, the back is quilted and flamed maple, with an Italian bear-claw top.

As covid cancellations and restrictions eased in 2022, concerts and public presentations were back more than ever. We were asked to participate in a symposium at the Library of Congress based on materials in the collection of Wanda Landowska, including one of her Pleyel harpsichords we had restored. After more than 15 years of use since we returned it to them, it needed some serious interior action regulation, which was done on the stage of Coolidge Auditorium, documented by a Library photographer. Our presentation focused on her Pleyels’ condition, what we had done to them, and why. It can be viewed toward the end of a videotaping available from the Library or on YouTube.

A second bass was underway by Jacob Stone in his “off” hours: patterned after a 1795 Pietro Pallotta original, it was different from the shop’s usual menu. Made with a removable neck, it was finished in the white by the end of the year, and Tom tried it out.

Another big order that finally got serious attention during the pandemic was a fortepiano for Juilliard (Schantz model). While it wasn’t finished until the next year, we took photos of the spectacular veneers (mahogany pommelle on the case and exterior, with bees-wing satinwood on the lid interior) while the instrument was being varnished.

09/25/2026

Some weeks, more work gets done than photos get taken!

Zippi never rests… sort of. 🐾

Address

6562 Main Street
The Plains, VA
20198

Telephone

+15402535430

Website

http://wolfinstruments.com/

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when Wolf Instruments posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.