> The Wittner Fine Tune pegs retain the traditional hardwood appearance demanded by professional musicians while offering a unique internal gearing system that makes them a revelation to use.
I'm thinking about buying some of those pegs myself. I saw them for 80 Euros for a violin. They come in two sizes, 7.8 mm and 8.6 mm.
When I read violin forums it's often about name dropping. Who made the instrument? How ancient is it? When I bought my first violin I told them my upper limit and to give me instruments without telling me anything at all about them. I tried about 8 different ones for two hours and ended up spending 1000 Euros (just the pure instrument without anything else, well, strings of course, Thomastik Dominant). I never looked at any of them closely, not even the one I ended up buying. Only when I was back home did I really have a look at what I bought. Until then I only cared about how it felt and how it sounded. I considered a Mezzo-Forte (carbon) but thought I'm not advanced enough to be able to make good decision (yet), besides, it would have cost 2400 Euros, quite a bit more. What I read about that carbon instrument was pretty positive - pretty much all negative comments were almost all along the line "it's not traditional", often without even having ever tried one.
https://www.mezzo-forte.de/en/
https://www.simplyforstrings.com.au/blog/wittner-finetune-pe...
https://www.thomann.de/gb/wittner_violin_tuning_pegs_4_4_78.... (linking only the 7.8 mm version)
I'd love some for my viol even more, as it's got seven strings all made of gut and goes out of tune with the slightest shift in humidity or temperature. Anybody who doubts the progress of violin making just needs to play the viol for a while, as viol design is still mostly just recreations of the old instruments. Or play baroque violin - violin as Stradivarius actually made it - and understand that progress has been made.
I think the adherence to worship of the past is a relatively modern thing, but it's nice to see things moving around. I've seen quite a few very interesting instruments on the English folk scene lately by Tim Phillips.