Voirin Octagonal Pernambuco Viola Bow

I took a chance on this one because the first rating wasn’t related to the quality of the product. I’ll start with the pros. The stick is straight and the bottom half of the bow has satisfactory strength. The cons are that I feel like it’s difficult to control the upper half of the bow. I was not expecting a perfect, professional level bow at this low price point. But this didn’t meet my expectations for German craftsmanship. For example, an unattractive piece of mother of pearl (half a yellow brown color) was selected for the slide and one of the corners of the mother of pearl slide is missing. It’s not something you would notice from a distance, but it would definitely be noticeable to any player. The literal cut corner on the slide makes me wonder what figurative corners they cut. There’s also a little bit of a gap between the tongue and the ebony of the frog on the opposite side of the cut corner. There are some dark spots on the stick that I worry could be knots that could compromise the structural integrity of the stick at some point. Perhaps I’m just unlucky and got the one rough one out of the bunch, but it’s not a keeper. I wish I had ordered one of the bows with glowing reviews.