CecilioSolid Wood Viola 16 Inch Viola Full Size, Professional Handcrafted Acoustic Viola with Ebony Fittings, D'Addario Prelude Strings, Antique Satin Finish

This is an amazing viola considering how cheap it is! I am not a professional musician, but I did dabble with the violin and piano for a short while, and I spent a lot of time with my Conservatory friends at Oberlin. I feel I know good music when I hear it, and this viola produces some really nice tones for it's price range. I bought it for my 9 year old daughter because she picked it as the instrument she wanted to learn for her free music lessons at school. I looked into renting one, and it would have costed us around $30/month to rent a $600 viola. Only 60% of that rental money would go toward purchasing the viola. Since I would like my daughter to stick with this instrument for at least a year, it would have costed me more to just rent an instrument than to buy this one. Plus, there was no guarantee that my daughter would stick with it for more than a year, so I would end up spending all that money for nothing.After doing tons of research online (and despite the dire warnings in the music teacher's note home against buying instruments online) I picked this 14" Cecilio viola as the best candidate for my budget and current needs. The viola arrived on time and in good shape. It came with all the pieces shown in the picture and mentioned in the description. I love that it came with the D'Addario strings already on it and somewhat tightened so I didn't have to work too hard to carefully stretch the strings while tuning it and playing with it over the next few days after I received the instrument. The case is a standard, canvas-like covering over a foam core with cream-colored velveteen fabric on the inside. It's just big enough for the viola with 2 slots for bows, and a small compartment at the end for the extra bridge, rosin, tuner, some extra strings, and a rubber mute (Gotta have one of those! ;) heh, heh!). There is barely space for the shoulder rest, but I wasn't thrilled with how it rests right on the tuning pegs and neck. There is a small pocket on the outside of the case, but it is barely big enough to fit my daughter's music book without zipping it entirely shut. I was skeptical about the tuner, but after testing it with several other tuners I have, it was consistent with all of the decent ones, so I let my daughter practice tuning her viola with it. The rosin isn't anything fancy, but I've encountered worse. I say it's good enough to start with, but would recommend getting a nicer block as soon as possible. The extra bridge is also meh, but again, that is easily replaceable with a nicer one should I feel the need to do so. The bow is surprisingly decent. It has a nice curve to it - not too curved, not too straight - and the hairs are not falling out all over the place. It also has a nice weight to it. I feel it may be a smidge heavy for my daughter, but she seems to like it and plays well enough with it.Now, the viola itself. I must admit, I was surprised at the color when I first opened it. It seemed much more orangey than I anticipated. I was thinking it was going to be a medium reddish-brown, but it is more of a dark pumpkin orange-brown. It's not a color I associate with classy string instruments, but that's a minor detail for a student instrument. The back does appear to be flamed, so it does have that nice striped/flamed pattern on it. The tuning pegs were all a bit loose, but a little rosin on them tightened them up just fine. The chinrest is a fairly low-profile off-centered one and works well enough with my daughter's small neck. The tailpiece is sturdy with 4 metal fine tuners already mounted on it. I would have preferred built-in fine tuners, but that is also something that can be changed out later if I want to. I can't easily tell if the purflings really are inlaid like they said they are in the description, but there are spots here and there that make me think they are.Initial setup of the instrument involved a bit of fussing with it. I would not say it was ready to play straight out of the box, but there was nothing wrong with it that I couldn't do myself. I did have to straighten and center the bridge a bit, and I mentioned having to rosin the pegs. That involved loosening and taking each string off, rubbing the peg along the rosin a few times, then putting the peg and string back on. Tedious, but not impossible or hard. Tuning this instrument is easy. The pegs are easy to turn, and the fine tuners help. The D'Addario strings keep in tune beautifully, so I'm glad I paid a bit extra for them.Finally, how does this viola sound? It sounds beautiful! Nice, deep, mellow tones that I associate with the viola come out of this instrument - even when my daughter first started bowing on it. ;) heh, heh! There is a good resonance that I can feel when I play it. It sounds so pretty that even my husband doesn't mind hearing our daughter scratching away on it, and we haven't had to use the mute yet. Just for fun, I restrung one of my spare violins as a viola (I read online that some people do that as a substitute for a 14" viola), and compared the sound. There is no comparison. The real viola is so much more deep and resonant than the violin-strung-as-a-viola.Now, I know this doesn't even begin to touch a professional viola's sound and quality, but I bought this for my 9 year old daughter. She only needs something that can produce decent tones, and this viola amply fills that need. Even her music teacher was surprised at the quality of the instrument despite it being bought online. My daughter says he often uses her instrument to demonstrate something during class, so I assume he's okay with it. She's been playing on it for a little over 3 months, now, and is still going on strong. I will update this review later if there is more to add.

Beautiful instrument, exactly what I was hoping it would be, will be using it in jam sessions old timey music. You can see a lot of care taken in putting this package together.

So I now have two of these instruments bought one years apart. We have loved the first one, which has been my oldest child’s orchestra instrument. I has served her well. It still has all the same equipment and set up that it came with, although we are upgrading the strings and bow in the next week and will see how that changes things.The second we bought just this month. It arrived yesterday. I was a wee bit disappointed in this latest one when we opened the case. As the pictures show, there was some cosmetics issues with the f holes where the finish appears to have chipped off. My younger child, who is the one that will be playing this one doesn’t care, is excited to have her own instrument, and wants to keep it anyway, so that is what we will be doing. This isn’t a huge deal considering the price we paid and that it is meant as a student viola and just needs to be playable for our purposes.My oldest played the two instruments side by side and the difference in sound the two was very noticeable. The newer one has a more closed and runny sound, while the newer one sounds much prettier. It could be the minute differences in the instruments, or it could be the natural maturing of the sound of the first instrument that has occurred over the year we have had it. I am going to assume that the latter scenario is the dominating cause, which means that the sound improves beautifully over time, and I look forward to the new one doing this as well.Overall, as a first instrument for elementary age children, I like this product. It is serving the purpose we need it for well, and will continue to do so until they quit or decide they are passionate about the instrument and become skilled enough for an upgrade.There is a picture of these two side by side from the back. The newer one is on the left, our older one on the right. Despite being the same model, they look very different. I like the grain pattern of the older, although the new one is pretty too. The finish of the older one is darker. The newer one is orangier. This demonstrates how unique each of these violas are.