Hear Annie Camp
in performance on one of our
Voss Cellos
This Site and Audio Recordings
produced by:noeljones@frogmusic.com
Violins, Violas and Cellos
New Voss Violins & Violoncellos
Instrument Repairs & Renovations
Bow Rehairing
When visiting our new shop:
Use the entrance on Glen Iris, drive behind the building into the parking garage. The first parking level is for our visitors. Take the breezeway in to the courtyard from the garage. When you come out of the breezeway you will find Voss Violins is the last loft on the left towards the front building. Shop open by appointment.
Stephanie B. Voss - Certified Master Violin Maker
Member of VDG: Federation of German Violin and Bow Makers since 2002
6/98 – present Independently working violin maker in Atlanta with main emphasis on larger restoration projects and new making.
Repairs and restoration for professional, amateur musicians and other violin shops.
Dealer for violin, viola and cello and their bows.
1/95 – 6/98 Williams Gengakki Violins, Atlanta
Master Violin Maker
Developing WGVs workshop in Atlanta with full responsibility for all repairs, restorations and setup of instruments. Trained and supervised additional violin making staff. Worked also with customers in Tokyo/Japan subsidiary.
2/94 – 10/94 Peter Erben, Violin Maker, Munich/Germany
Master Violin Maker
Responsible for all repairs and restorations
10/93 – 2/94 Master Course and Master Exam in Violin Making
Mittenwald and Munich / Germany
Graduated: Geigenbaumeisterin (Master Diploma)
8/87 – 9/93 Hermann G. Woerz, Munich/Germany
Violin Maker
Responsible for repairs and restorations as well as bow repairs.
2/84 – 7/87 Violin Making School in Mittenwald/Germany
Graduated: Certified Violin Maker
Kile Hill, originally from Memphis, TN, has joined Stephanie Voss as her assistant.
Kile has a strong musical background as a cellist. He began playing the cello in 4th grade.
Phyllis Long, a member of the Memphis Symphony, was his private instructor from elementary school throughout high school.
He was a member of the Memphis Youth Symphony, which influenced his decision to major in music.
Kile attended The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where he studied cello performance under Dr. Jim Stroud. He also attended Brevard Summer Music Festival for two seasons in Brevard, NC.
Kile’s training in lutherie began at the Violin Making School of America in Salt Lake City, UT, where he spent three years.
After attending the VMSA, he worked three years for Scoggins & Scoggins Violins under Michael Scoggins and Carrie Scoggins learning set-up, repair, and constructing workshop cellos for their company.
For a year and a half Kile was an assistant to Ryan Soltis, an up and coming maker in this country.
When time allows, Kile builds new instruments, hoping someday to be renowned for his new making, having a special affinity for cellos.
Outside of work, he is an avid skier who also enjoys cycling, ice-skating, camping, and of course playing the cello!
Trade-In & Warranty
Please find below our policies regarding trade-in, resale and warranty of instruments and bows purchased at my shop.
Should you like to upgrade your instrument or bow in a more expensive instrument or bow, you will be allowed 100 % of the purchase price as trade in.
Should you find a bow or instrument elsewhere and would like me to resell yours, I will, upon its sale, pay you 80% of the sale price.
This policy is contingent upon the excellent state of preservation of instrument or bow. For bows there may be a service charge of US$ 33 for a rehair, if necessary for resale.
All bows and instruments are sold with a warranty for 12 months
This warranty covers any necessary repairs or adjustments, with the exception of those due to damage incurred subsequent to purchase. The replacement of strings and bow hair are not covered by this warranty.
Voss Violins offers a once a year complimentary check up on instruments and bows. The check up includes a cleaning of the instrument and /or bow, small touch up, if necessary, and small adjustments to sound post, bridge and pegs, if necessary.
Should the instrument incur an accident we will be happy to provide you with another comparable instrument or bow for no additional cost while your instrument is with me for repair.
Also, all repairs are discounted 20% on instruments and bows sold by Voss Violins.
WORLD BAZAAR
Atlanta violin maker keeps strings of history in tune
By JILL SABULIS
Atlanta Journal-Constitution Staff Writer
 Jill Sabulis |
Stephanie Voss carves out history with her hands.
The master violin maker from Hamburg, Germany, restores, repairs and makes from scratch fine string instruments in her home studio. Lining the walls of the workroom are three dozen violins. A cello made in the 1780s and valued at more than $80,000 sits on her bench, awaiting her attention.
Graduated files and chisels lined up at arm's reach, Voss spends her days playing these instruments in a different way. Rather than stroking them with a bow or plucking their strings, she must coax the secrets of instrument makers who have been dead a couple of centuries.
"We're trying to preserve as much of the old violin makers' work as possible," she says.
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With their varying shades of rich browns, intricate wood graining and varnished sheen, these instruments could be called a work of art themselves. Voss argues with that description.
"They are pretty things," she says. "But they are made to make music. If they don't make the right sound, they disappear in time."
And the instruments she spends her days with are, after all, only "tools that make art," she says.
It was no coincidence that Voss chose this as her profession. Her grandfather, a music teacher, taught her as a child. ("The first time I held a violin in my hands I was 4 years old and much too young, according to my grandfather, because he took it away from me," she says, laughing.)
Her father, a clarinetist, worked for Steinway & Sons in Hamburg. Through one of his co-workers, Voss first became interested in violin making, eventually working at Steinway part time through high school. She learned to play classical guitar and trumpet -- and some violin. With the cello and viola, "I know scales to adjust them, but I wouldn't want to give a concert."
Upon graduation, she was one of 12 students accepted out of 600 applicants to the famed Mittenwald School of violin making in southern Bavaria in Germany. In 1995, she chose to come to the United States to work for a violin shop in Atlanta. After four years, she went solo.
Voss' customers are professional musicians, collectors and everyday music students -- primarily from around the Southeast, though she takes in work from shops in the Northeast and one customer sends instruments for repair and maintenance all the way from Tokyo. "Going to a violin maker for a musician is like going to a doctor for most people," she says. "It has to be someone you know and trust."
In addition, she makes new instruments from the stack of European spruce and Bosnian maple that sits atop an armoire in her studio. These new pieces are most time-consuming, taking up to 4 1/2 months of full-time work, including time for the multiple coats of varnish to dry.
And she also buys old instruments at auction -- mostly from wholesalers in Europe -- and restores them for resale. Like people, the instruments have personalities, she says. "Maybe it's like a chemistry between human beings. Some instruments you like; others you go, 'Oh my God, what were they thinking?' It's after a while that it reveals more and more about itself.
"We are just caretakers of these instruments while we're alive. They are so much older than we will ever be. They will survive their owners by hundreds of years."
Despite her modesty and even protestations to the contrary, Voss finally admits that, yes, these instruments she devotes her life to are more than just "tools."
"They are works of art."
Voss Violins. Hours by appointment only. 404-876-8617
We are proud to create cellos fine enough to put our shop name on them and sign them.
• We work with a small luthier shop in China that we know well and trust. They create and ship us the ribs and parts to our design and specifications. Once they arrive here in our shop we pop off the top (it has been spot glued for shipping to the United States) and begin to finish the work they have started for us.
• We check and, if needed, correct the arch, the f-holes, final graduation and bass bar.
• The back also receives a final graduation as well as arch correction as required by each individual instrument.
• The neck and pegbox then are reworked to ensure a light neck with proper dimensions and also to bring out the beauty of the wood and carving....just like the rest of the cello.
•We work hard to create instruments that are inspirations to us as Luthiers, and to you as Cellists, and to bring out the individual character of each as an instrument in its appearance and its sound.
•None of them look alike, they are truly individual instruments, even in varnish color. The color can be ordered if desired, so can the sound character, for example: medium brown varnish on a gold brown ground with a dark, yet powerful sound.
• The lead time if an instrument is ordered with personal preferences is about 6-8 weeks.
The Deluxe Voss Violoncello
Included:
Well selected silver mounted/ pernambuco stick cello bow
A light-weight Eastman cello case, carbon line, with wheels
A choice of strings
$12,500.00
Options:
Your choice of additional options, for example:
Ebony head planetary perfection heads on Titanium for $350.
The Basic Voss Violoncello
Included:
Regular Shop Setup
Ebony pegs
Ebony Tailpiece with integrated carbon fine tuners
Carbon fiber endpin
Belcanto gold C,G and Larsen A,D strings
$9,500.00
contact: stephanie voss violins
