I broke my first bow on Christmas Eve at the age of 15. It fell on its tip and, to my horror, the head snapped off. Until that moment I hadn’t fully realized that the bow was not an accessory but a sort of co-instrument with the violin. Two days later, anxious to begin playing again, I took my great-grandfather’s fiddle to Seattle and made my very first visit to a violin shop. I remember the light filtering through the dusty leaded glass windows, the aging oriental rugs, the racks of cellos, a rack of antlers, an old lute, and other instruments I didn’t recognize. It was an utterly arcane world, and standing at the glass counter with my entire life savings—$62—I realized I had no idea how to go about buying a bow.

Aspiring string players—or their parents—are routinely confronted with the necessity of buying a bow on a budget without enough knowledge to make an informed purchase. A bow can cost anywhere from $50 to tens of thousands and not look all that different to the untrained eye. What’s the difference between a $50 bow and a $150 bow? What can you expect in your price range? What advantages would just a little bit more money buy? What should you look for in a bow? And for that matter, where do you buy a bow?

Ch-ch-ch-changes
The last few years have seen big changes in a traditionally slow-moving trade. Carbon fiber has gained acceptability as an alternative to wood and has recently started coming down in price. The Internet has made good information on bows more accessible and changed the way we shop, while China has emerged as a violin- and bow-making powerhouse. “China has really arrived in the last two or three years,” says Jay Ifshin of Ifshin Violins in Berkeley, California, noting that quality has increased dramatically. Like a growing number of retailers, Ifshin runs his own workshop in China, training workers and overseeing production of his own models. “Some teachers get hung up on European,” he adds, “but these days Chinese bows are better.”

“It’s a good situation right now for players,” says Todd French, president of StringWorks,
a company that designs its own line of instruments and bows. A confluence of conditions currently is working in favor of the consumer, he says, including a low-cost workforce in China and an unfavorable exchange rate with Europe. Quality has increased dramatically, with most work being done by hand rather than machine, while prices have come down. “Who knows how long it will last,” says French, whose designs are made by a workshop in China.

The entry-level bow market can be confusing. Entry-level bows are made of several different materials. Prices vary widely and products are frequently not branded but simply labeled with the name of the retailer—if they are stamped at all. To get oriented, we’ll start with an explanation of materials, a major factor in price and playability, then describe what to expect in different price ranges.

Materials
While fine bows have been made of one wood, called pernambuco, for the last 200 years, bows for the beginner come in a variety of materials. Pernambuco is prized for its beauty, resilience, and ability to draw tone out of an instrument, but it is also expensive and increasingly endangered. A number of less-precious materials are suitable for beginners, who may not be ready to handle the liveliness of pernambuco.

Leon and Ray Glasser invented the fiberglass bow in 1962, ushering in the use of synthetic materials for bow making. Fiberglass is a composite of lightweight plastic reinforced with fine fibers of glass that can then be molded. The resulting bows have a brighter, less complex sound than wood, but have the advantage of being consistent, inexpensive, and virtually indestructible.

Brazilwood is a generic term for hardwoods from Brazil. Pernambuco is a single genus of brazilwood, and it grows only in one place: the endangered Mata Atlantica rainforest on the coast of Brazil. Other brazilwoods grow more widely and make successful student bows. Excellent-quality brazilwood can be as good or better than low-grade pernambuco, according to Richard Ward of Ifshin Violins.