Fisher Violins & Strings Instruments

08/29/2026

Fridays are for fiddle hangs! 🎻

These are my favorite kind of days in the shop. Spending time with friends, passing fiddles and bows back and forth, swapping tunes and stories. It doesn't get much better.

Wally came in to pick up his beloved Barry Dudley 5-string fiddle. He (and his fiddle) were in a bicycle accident a couple months ago. Thankfully Wally got out of the hospital much sooner than his fiddle did. The neck was completely detached and needed to be reset. There was a crack in the back that needed repair. It also got a new bridge and soundpost while it was in the shop. He said if feels just the way he remembers it and sounds even better than before.

He also got to pick out the back for his next (and my first) 5-string fiddle! 👀

Thanks to Wally, Mike, and Keith for stopping by and providing a great ending to an eventful week at the shop.

08/22/2026

Well, the dog days of summer have caught up with me and I realized it's been a while since I've posted anything on here.

Tomorrow (SATURDAY 8/22) I'll be at the York County Fiddler's Picnic with a slew of violins for sale. Stop by the Fisher Violins booth and try them out.

One violin I'm especially excited about is the one shown here, built by Master Luthier Mark Bluett in 1990. It is for sale on consignment on behalf of the estate of its original owner. We are so grateful that this violin found its way back into our shop and that we've been trusted to help find a new home for it after 36 years with its original owner. Mark's violins don't come up for sale very often these days and this is one sounds and plays every bit as good as it looks. Stop by and try it out.

The third slide is proof that I'm still making progress on my next batch of fiddles 🎻 🫡

07/16/2026

The shop will be open BY APPOINTMENT ONLY until July 29th. Master Luthier Mark Bluett will be holding down the fort for me while I'm gone. Feel free to send an email to [email protected] or call 484-893-9142 (leave a message if you don't reach me right away) if you would like to make an appointment.

I'm off to California to see some live music, play some live music, visit with fiddle friends, and spend a few days in the mountains and the redwoods! 🎻🌞🌲🏔

07/12/2026

I had the pleasure of traveling up to Brattleboro, Vermont, last weekend to deliver violin #3 to its new home. Thanks to for all the good times and the hospitality. We went to a Québécois fiddle session and then had a nice bluegrass jam at the house. The fiddle community in Brattleboro is thriving! I even got to visit some of the local swimming holes while I was there 🌞🏊‍♂️

I have two more violins currently underway. #4 is already spoken for, but #5 is still up for grabs. Send me a message if you want to claim it as your own!

07/09/2026

It's been a while since I've done a shop update, so here it is. I used up insta's 20 picture limit on this one...

1-2: Late night luthery in the barn. Shaping cleats, two violins and a mandolin in progress.

3-5: Crack repair on a lovely violin by K. A. Gütter made in 1922. I used parallelogram cleats to reinforce the crack from the inside. wrote an excellent article on this technique for Triangle Strings.

6-9: Closing up the Gütter violin and stringing it up. Still have some varnish retouching to do. Had to include a shot of the back because it's pretty.

10-13: Crack repair and fret leveling on a Martin OMC-18

14: Upright basses taking up a lot of real estate in the shop

15-17: Dot installation and seam glue up one of the basses

18-19: Restringing a Schreiber autoharp. If you thought changing 8 strings on a mandolin was a pain, imagine changing 37 on an autoharp! And lots of little pieces to take apart and keep track of.

20: Chicory!

And that's not even all of it! But that is all for now.

07/04/2026

Looking forward to Berks Fiddle Fest this year, as always! I am playing my violin #1 in this video. Hopefully I'll have a new one with me this year. Any tune suggestions for this year's contest?

Quentin Fisher delivers a powerhouse performance, taking 2nd Place ...

06/29/2026

Great time yesterday at !

I'm glad got to try out my latest fiddle before I send off to Vermont this week. Thanks for giving it a test drive!

Always happy to catch up with as well. I finally got to check out one of these I've been hearing about. Not only does it live up to the hype, but it exceeds all expectations of tone and beauty. Nice work Matt! And thanks for showing it off Josh.

06/27/2026

I'm so grateful I had the opportunity to participate in the this year. The amount of accumulated knowledge and experience in that room is truly astounding. Thanks to for all your work in putting this event together (right here in my home state!) and reaching out to me.

Now that I'm back home I'm trying to catch up on my new instrument builds. There are lots of fun repair and restoration projects going on at the shop as well. More updates to come, stay tuned! 🎻

06/01/2026

Check out this brand new mandolin made by Master Luthier Mark Bluett! This is an untitled waltz I wrote a few years back. Enjoy!

05/24/2026

Some weeks it's nothing but fiddles, other weeks it's guitars of all stripes.

Here in pics 1 & 3 we have an old Gibson archtop whose back had begun separating from the sides and neck block, rendering it unplayable. Got it all glued back together and set up for optimal playability.

In pics 2 & 4 is a classical guitar whose bridge had broken clean off over the course of the long, harsh winter we had this year. Winters like that are hard on instruments. Now the bridge is back on and good as new.

In pics 5 & 6 you can see an Earvana compensated nut that I installed on a Firefly electric guitar. Without getting into the physics of how this works, the idea is that is makes your guitar play more in tune across the whole fretboard.

In slide 7 is a violin that came in for a new nut, bridge, fretboard dressing, open seams, and a new set of strings. Check out the interesting scroll and the carvings on the pegbox.

Now that all those projects are out of the way, I'm rewarding myself by carving the purfling channels on the backs of my next set of violins, as seen in the final picture.

Happy Memorial Day, enjoy the cookouts and don't forget to honor those who have made the ultimate sacrifice for our country 🇺🇲