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You are here: Home / Videos / Quick Tips / The Pesky Violin Hickey Tip #2 – Quick Tip

January 17, 2019

The Pesky Violin Hickey Tip #2 – Quick Tip

Watch Tip #1 of The Violin Hickey here.

Hi I’m Vi Wickam and this is your Quick Tip of the Week, from myTalentForge.com.

Last week we talked about the dreaded violin hickey. And this week I’m going to give you another tip that is a little less commonly known about how to avoid and deal with the violin hickey.

You’ll notice this piece right here is metal. Now on mine, it’s gold plated. The reason I got one that has gold plated hardware, is because I am allergic to nickel. Nickel is a common metal that’s used in chrome plating and in stainless steal. It’s also an irritant to a lot of people.

I’m particularly sensitive, but I think a lot more people are sensitive to nickel than actually realize it. And most of these are actually made using nickel as part of the construction.

So, being as that can be a common irritant, it can also be a source of the violin hickey. So, you’ve got a number of options for covering this up.

The reason that I was motivated to talk about the violin hickey is actually right down here, the gold plating on mine started wearing off about a week ago, and I started feeling some irritation there on the base of my neck.

I couldn’t figure out why because I normally keep things clean and I got the gold plated hardware on this. But then I looked at it and I noticed that the gold plating was wearing off, and some nickel is showing through, or some chrome plating, or stainless steel.

I’m going to actually cover mine with a little bit of clear nail polish, which should last a few months. You can also get ones that are plastic. One of the things that I’ve also done is take an older one that is brass underneath, so it’s chrome plated brass, and polished the chrome off of them, so it’s just brass. Which is not as irritating.

Or you can do what Itzhak Perlman does, and you can put a handkerchief over your chin rest, which will also cover this.

But the fact that this hardware contains nickel and can be irritating is something that most people aren’t aware of, and now you are!

So good luck out there avoiding the dreaded violin hickey. I wish you well this week! Practice fun! And I’ll see you next time.

UPDATE: The nail polish didn’t work. It didn’t adhere to the metal well, and ended up just as a mess that I had to scrape off. I will end up having to have it replated, or buy a new one. :-/

Article by Vi Wickam / Quick Tips / cleaning your instrument, fiddle, free music lesson, myTalentForge, quick practice tip, quick tip, vi wickam, viola, violin, violin hickey Leave a Comment

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