Discount Musical instruments - By 2Kool4Skool

1. Have the strings slightly taut so that the bridge will be held up and will remain stationary when placed on the top.
2. Make sure that the lower part of the bridge is positioned on the treble side of the strings; the higher part should be towards the bass side of the strings...the G string should be located on the high point of the bridge.
3. Place the bridge directly between the two notches of the f sound holes.
4. Makes sure that each string is in their respective slots of the bridge. If your bridge doesn't have slots pre-cut for each string, you will have to take it in for proper fitting.
5. Make sure that the bridge is properly aligned. The G and E strings need to be centered on the fingerboard. One shouldn't be closer to the edge than another.
6. Now once the bridge is properly aligned between the two notches of the f soundholes, and the strings appear to be centered, and all strings are in their respective slots on the bridge, you can now view the bridge from the side. You'll want to tilt the bridge very slightly towards the tailpiece.
7. Once the bridge is properly tilted, ever so slightly, and everything else is aligned as described above, you're now ready to tighten your violin strings. In tightening your violin strings, you'll want to be extra careful in making sure that they're tightened in a balanced manner.
a. First make sure that your wooden pegs have some kind of anti-slippage substance on them...this can be the biggest cause of frustration when first attempting to tune as a beginner. There are a few compounds and techniques to ensure that your violin pegs remain stationary. For instance, there's a tool called "Peg Drops" which seems to work very well in ensuring that once the pegs are tightened they remain without slipping. Remember, the more taut the string, the more tension on the wooden peg. Hence, when tuning all the way up to pitch, it becomes critical to push in the peg slightly as turning for a tighter, more stable, tuning process.
b. Now, when first tightening up each string, be careful to approach this in a balanced way. Do not just tune one string all the way up to pitch while all the other strings go untouched. You'll want to tune up each string in slight increments moving from the G to E to D to A...slowly move each string up to pitch by alternating from one string to another. Once all strings are close to concert pitch, then you can focus on fine tuning one string at a time. If you do not approach your tuning in this manner, you'll end up with the bridge becoming ajar from too much tension pulled on one side...another problem is that as you tune up the other stings, the first one tuned up to pitch will go out of tune slightly due to the released tension on the neck.