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Rating: 
Summary: Useful but shockingly disorganized
Review: Somehow, when I was an apprentice, I didn't pay nearly enough attention to standard setup. For years, I've done penitence for my folly by painstakingly collecting measurements from any authoritative source I could find. With some skepticism, I bought this booklet to enhance my collection. On balance, I'm glad I did.Strobel's data jibes quite well with what's taught at the Mittenwald school, and what I've learned from personal observation and such sources as Sacconi, Moeckel, the Hill books, and many VSA presentations. It's nice to have it all in one place and the author is free of any odd theories and strikes a sound, reasonable tone throughout. Measurements (in mm) are often given as ranges reflecting accepted practice, rather than a single number, as it should be. Now the caveats: For a shop reference, this book is shockingly disorganized. The whole thing has a hobbyhorsiscal do-it-yourself quality, more like a chat with the author and a couple of handouts than a book. You really have to dig to find its nuggets of wisdom, which consist, primarily, of two detailed tables of standard measurements for violin, viola, and cello, and two detailed scale drawings of violin and cello setup. You will also find full-size bridge-curve templates, a reasonable discussion of bridge, bass bar, and sound post fitting, and some hints on eliminating cello wolf tones. This material, if collected together, would occupy about nine pages. The rest of the book's 47 folios are filled with what I can only describe as junk, including egregious clip art, cartoons, portraits of Paganini, lists of maker's measuring tools (steel tape!), a table of the frequencies of standard pitches, a 200-word French-German-Italian-English dictionary of luthier's terms, a weak bibliography, and some exceedingly thin information about various historical instruments. Why did the author give us a full page of Ingres' often-reproduced Paganini portrait while cramming both of his valuable setup diagrams into a miserable half page? Overall, you can't go wrong for the price, and you might just need to know in a pinch, say, the saddle height for a cello (12.5 mm). But I hope that the author, who seems to have at least eight books to his credit, would consider hiring an editor for his next venture.
Rating: 
Summary: "Must have" for hobbyists
Review: This is a great book if you work on stringed instruments, from serious repairs to fixing up eBay finds. Even includes measurements for fractional sizes, so you can set up those tiny violins for all the Suzuki students.
Rating:
Summary: "Must have" for hobbyists
Review: This is a great book if you work on stringed instruments, from serious repairs to fixing up eBay finds. Even includes measurements for fractional sizes, so you can set up those tiny violins for all the Suzuki students.
Rating:
Summary: Every maker of violin family instruments needs this book.
Review: This little book is worth its weight in gold. It contains every measurement necessary for the correct setting up of instruments. It is an indispensable tool in my workshop. Definitely well worth the money.
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