19/09/2023
The quality of the instrument one uses greatly influences his/her growth.
A good instrument helps you practice more because you enjoy the sound you hear, and vice versa.
A good instrument vibrates more and greatly helps intonation.
I’ve used very low-quality instruments that were nearly impossible to produce harmonics with, and very unresponsive, overall.
I’ve also used bad bows with which it was very difficult to execute some bow techniques such as sautille, spiccato, and ricochet. Techniques take longer to accomplish, and it is hard to produce a good sound on a bad instrument. Thereby elongating the overall time taken for the musician to reach a given skill level.
However, if one can accomplish a certain task with a bad instrument, he/she may do even better with a good one. Or, if one sounds good on a bad instrument, he/she might sound even better on a good one. But overall, the disadvantages of having and learning on a bad instrument outweigh the benefits.