What I didn’t know was that the case is pretty shoddily made and one of the ‘features’ of the case (which I didn’t mention above) scratched up the surface of my instrument.<\/p>\n
When I first purchased this case, I lived in Miami and had a car, so the case didn’t get much wear and tear at all. \u00a0It was either at home, in my car, or at University of Miami where I was getting an Artist Diploma. \u00a0Most noticeably, the first thing to break down with this case, were the feet on the back of the instrument like the picture below.<\/p>\n
![\"IMG_1257\"](\"http:\/\/www.fritz-reuter.com\/products\/bam\/shapedviolincase\/shaped2.jpg\")
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As you can see on the right hand side, there are four holes in the back of the case. \u00a0Here used to reside the “feet” for the back of case, which looked similar to the feet you can see on the far left of the image which the straps are attached too. \u00a0When they initially fell off. \u00a0I thought that perhaps, I had been a little careless about taking the case out of the car and putting it back in so that it tore at the feet in an awkward manner and caused them to be pulled out. \u00a0This was not the case though, as you will see in a moment when I discuss the ‘Subway Standing Feet’.<\/p>\n
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Here on the bottom left you can see my last remaining subway foot, which I kind of wish would just fall off at this point since I can’t balance it standing up \u00a0while on the subway anymore. \u00a0It’s hard to see, but there are three other screw holes in the canvas of the case where the other subway feet used to be and have since fallen off.<\/p>\n
Now, back to my thinking that the case was just getting abnormal wear and tear from my carelessness or freak bad luck. \u00a0The case was still under warranty at the end of my Artist Diploma, so when I moved back to New York City, I took my case out to the BAM warehouse in Jersey. \u00a0At that point I had lost only one of the feet on the back of the case, and two of the feet for the ‘subway stand’. \u00a0The customer service was great, they took it in and fixed that same afternoon, so there is no knock on them for that. \u00a0But after it was fixed up, all of these same things started falling off again from standard use. \u00a0I was not tossing my case around (the thought of doing so with my precious viola inside sends a shiver down my spine), or exposing it to terrible elements. \u00a0Because of this, I think that the anchors for all of the feet were just really weak. \u00a0Ultimately, it’s not a huge deal, because the integrity of the case is still good, but it’s annoying to have the feet not protecting the shell of the case on these two sides.<\/p>\n
These weren’t the only parts that degraded over time though. \u00a0On the inside of the case, the mechanism for changing the size of the harness for the instrument is velcro. \u00a0Looking below, I am lifting up the harness to display the degradation of the case, but you can see that the harness is velcro’d to to a strip that is supposed to be super-glued to the bottom of the shell. \u00a0You pick up the harness and move it around, sticking it back to the velcro strip on the bottom to make room for larger or smaller bodied instruments. \u00a0All in all, a pretty cool mechanism, until the strip on the bottom falls off and there’s nothing holding the instrument in the harness anymore. \u00a0Now, I wasn’t tearing at the velcro with the harness, I wasn’t moving it at all as I only keep this one instrument in the case. \u00a0In fact, all that happened was I opened up my case to find the velcro strip on the bottom of the case had fallen off one day and no longer wanted to cooperate in keeping my viola safe. \u00a0I have tried repairing this myself to varying degrees of success. \u00a0The ultimate solution would be some sort of stitching rather than various adhesives.<\/p>\n
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