Tucson: Southwest Strings Largest Distributor of Stringed Instruments to Schools

Southwest Strings still thriving



By Dan Sorenson

ARIZONA DAILY STAR

It’s an oddly quiet and peace­ful place for a warehouse of so much future noise — from aw­ful to sublime.

But at Southwest Strings, headquartered in an innocuous building on Cherrybell Strav­enue near the Main Post Office, hundreds — sometimes thou­sands — of violins await ship­ment to their new owners.

The 30-year-old privately owned local company is proba­bly unknown to most Tucso­nans, but it’s one of the busiest sellers of student violin-family instruments (violin, viola, cello, bass) in the country.

“We’re one of the biggest, if not the biggest, in the country to school programs,” said Re­becca Ensley, who heads up the department that inspects and prepares the imported instru­ments for sale. Southwest Strings’ record school sale sent 350 violins, 80­some cellos and 39 basses to one school district, Ensley said. The company also sells and repairs new and used, or “vin­tage,” mid- to high-level pro­fessional instruments.

At the top end, “We had a Paolo Vettori (violin), $17,000 to $18,000,” said Adan Rico, who heads up the repair shop.

But student instruments make up the bulk of the sales, said Sydney Cook, a supervisor in the business office. They’re sold “mail order” through a glossy 32-page catalog, the company’s Web site or its retail showroom or directly to schools.

Southwest Strings also wholesales instruments to mu­sic stores, but that is the small­est sales category, Ensley said.

Violins range in price from $150 for a beginners kit to more than $10,000 —and occasionally far beyond — for professional­quality instruments, Ensley said. The beginners instruments are made in Germany, Eastern Europe or, increasingly, China.

“Violin making in China is nothing like it was even five years ago,” said Rico. “They were poorly made. But a lot of (Chinese) makers since have re­ceived excellent training. One of the guys we deal with, Scot Cao, he’s a really good maker. They make a great product.”

Rico appreciates a variety of styles of music. Now 29, he started playing violin when he was 9 and continues to play with Mariachi Cielo de Mexico.

It’s his job as a luthier to get the sound out of an instrument that a musician wants, often by delicate adjustments, even things as subtle as a bridge with a particular type of wood grain.

Rico apprenticed locally but has twice studied under a mas­ter at a Paris violin shop.

Correct setup and repair service are every bit as impor­tant for a big catalog/mail or­der/ Internet instrument dealer as for a local shop, he said.

The student instruments, in particular those from China, may have had a rough life get­ting to Tucson. Before the school-season demand period, which starts in late July and peaks in October, the company may receive two or three ship­ping containers packed with vi­olins, violas, cellos and basses.

A transoceanic trip from the other side of the world in a giant shipping container and another leg across the desert from the Port of Los Angeles to Tucson constitute an ordeal for a deli­cate wooden instrument.

Some trips are worse than others. One time, Ensley said, a shipment showed up with veg­etables in some of the instru­ment boxes after the truck hada collision with a produce load.

She said it takes from an hour to an hour and a half to set up each instrument — between 10,000 and 15,000 instruments a year — so that it’s fit to play.

“This department is the backbone,” Ensley said of the group of technicians adjusting the string height, bridge place­ment and fingerboard finish on instruments awaiting shipment.

They make a beginners in­strument as easy to play as possi­ble, she said. A beginner might not even know that an instru­ment was unnecessarily difficult — or virtually impossible — to play because it was set up wrong.

“It’s hard enough to play an instrument, let alone fight your instrument,” Ensley said.

The technicians also make adjustments in the setup based on the climate the customer lives in. Differences in humidity

change the string height. A violin going to soggy Florida takes a dif­ferent adjustment from one bound for a Southwest home.

To protect that setup work, the company takes care to route shipments to minimize exposure to extreme heat and cold.

The recession has touched Southwest Strings, but Cook said the company has been par­tially protected from the school­district budget slashing going on nationwide, “because of the im­portance of music and the arts.” Parents, teachers and adminis­­trators have tried to keep it in the forefront in many districts.

Although Cook wouldn’t dis­close sales figures, the compa­ny’s staff growth and physical size speak for its success.

Owned by Celta Godfrey Sheppard and Stephen Sheppard, the company began with three employees and now has 36 — nearly all musicians, many of them students, Cook said. It began in a 2,500-square­foot building on Prince Road, moved to a 10,000-square-foot building on South Park Avenue with 4,000 feet of off-site stor­age, and a few years ago moved to the 30,000-square-foot build­ing on Cherrybell.

Contact reporter Dan Sorenson at 573-4185 or dsorenson@azstarnet.com.