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(TNS) — The most expensive violins in the world were made by Antonio Stradivari in the 18th century. These instruments regularly fetch millions of dollars when they surface at auctions, with a sale this year shattering previous records at $23 million.
This is attributable — at least in part — to brand name. Blind listening tests with professional players over the years have shown that it’s tough for even a trained ear to distinguish the special “Stradivarius” sound from a newer instrument.
That said, it’s a little easier to tell the difference between a wooden and a plastic violin. In Coal Center, about an hour south of Pittsburgh, four elementary student girls lined up in a small but cleanly kept music room at California Area Middle School to play through a simple song.
GOOD HARMONY
Their brows furrowed in concentration as they sawed through a song based on open strings, with the school district’s superintendent, Laura Jacob, a violinist herself, conducting a little with her hand and smiling slightly.
Each of the girls’ violins was a different color, but that’s not what made them most unique. Jacob had made the violins herself with an array of 3D printers the school had purchased with the help of philanthropic grants.
California Area School District is a rural Washington County school system comprised of about 900 students that’s located in an area where around 70 percent of residents are low-income. Since arriving in 2020, Jacob has fought to keep the music program in the district as arts programs face cuts across the country.
3D-printing violins for students has allowed her to keep instruments in her students’ hands at minimal cost.
FREE TO PLAY
Jacob, who still wakes up as early as 4 a.m. some days to take lessons from a teacher in Scotland, arrived at California five years ago. A video by the Ottawa Symphony about the possibilities of using new technologies in instruments inspired her to experiment with 3D-printing them for her students.
“When I was in school, violin was my reason to get up every day,” Jacob said.
It can cost $100 or more for a student to rent a wooden violin, a price that might prevent some families from signing their kids up for a school music program.
Building a 3D-printed violin costs much less, about $50 total, and they come in custom colors. Pink and camo green are especially popular this year.
Jacobs buys violin strings and bows, guitar tuning pegs and wooden bridges (the part of the violin that braces the strings against the instrument’s body) on Amazon. It takes about two days to print a violin from a free, open-source design she found online.
“I just give ’em to the kids for free,” she said.
It also offers a safer option for students who might be notoriously rough with their instruments. If a printed instrument breaks, it’s not a big deal to replace it.
On the wall of her office, Jacobs has a flattened brass sousaphone hanging as a reminder.
“Yeah, a parent actually ran over that one,” she said, smiling.
The sound of a 3D-printed violin is not as warm as a wooden violin. Instruments that were printed as a single piece rather than in multiple pieces sounded much more resonant and comparable to a wooden instrument.
The school currently has only a single printer capable of printing violins as single pieces.
PRACTICAL MUSIC
Schools across the country have cut music programs for a variety of reasons, including diminishing budgets, a shift in emphasis toward STEM subjects and standardized testing, as well as declining enrollment.
It was particularly true during the COVID-19 pandemic years, when in-person instruction was impossible.
At the same time, scientific research continues to confirm that there are significant benefits to studying music as children and adults. Singing or playing an instrument, especially in a group setting, can help develop children’s “executive function,” or their ability to prioritize tasks and make decisions, according to The National Library of Medicine. It also improves fine motor skills, social skills and much more.
This is true whether a student pursues music beyond the classroom or not.
Advocates for school music programs often cite the cost of instruments, whether the cost is shouldered by the parents or schools themselves, as a barrier to keeping music learning in school.
In Pittsburgh, the organization Chamber Music Pittsburgh keeps an instrument library that allows it to loan out instruments to families who need assistance. There are other assistance programs available, but California’s method of printing instruments on-site seems especially practical.
Plus, some of the students have become interested in instrument making and are now building wooden instruments as a school project.
The school’s music program is just an hour a week on Fridays for grades K-6, and there is a band program at the high school level. Jacobs says she hires a music teacher each year, but the salary isn’t competitive and the position turns over frequently.
“I’m very open to partnering with other schools that might need this,” she said, adding that she intends to experiment with printing other kinds of instruments as well.
Jeremy Reynolds’s work at the Post-Gazette is supported in part by a grant from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Getty Foundation and Rubin Institute.
©2025 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
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