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    Whitney Osterud Violins

    5.0 (1 review)

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    9 months ago

    He is the best luthier for sound adjustments I've ever been to! I highly recommend him!

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    Bein & Fushi - Can you identify this outstanding violin?

    Bein & Fushi

    (9 reviews)

    $$$$

    The Loop

    Absolutely amazing service. Very knowledgeable and willing to help. I just needed help restringing…read moremy violin since I'd never done it before properly, and they were more than willing to teach me how to do it on a moment's notice. I will definitely be returning.

    I would give zero stars to this establishment if I could. I am a Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra…read morealumnae ('05) who used to rehearse in the same historic Fine Arts Bldg (where this shop is located) every Sunday. As a high school student, I used to perform in violin competitions in the Midwest but was about to graduate from medical school and start residency in California. In need of money to repay loans, I placed my Carl Becker violin and Fetique bow on consignment in April 2019 with Bein & Fushi. The pandemic hit tail-end of 2019/early 2020 and the shop closed for at least one year. The original consignment contract I signed was for 6 months. Communication (even remotely) with the owner of Bein and Fushi (Gabriel) and his staff was nonexistent throughout the pandemic. I constantly called and left e-mails and voicemails in the hopes of getting an update. The violin was finally sold in October 2021, but the payment took several months to come through. Even as a busy physician (just having completed residency in 2022 and having returned to Chicago from California), I physically visited the shop on Michigan Avenue in April '24 in the hopes of forcing an update regarding the status of my bow, which has remained on consignment since April 2019 (mind you, 5+ years later). The front desk (Trista) promised to send a hard copy of a new 6-month contract signed by Gabriel (owner), which never materialized. She mentioned nonchalantly that there's a "surplus of inventory in the area after the Pandemic," which still failed to address the incommunicado issue. After I called several times 3 months later asking what happened to the agreement, an electronic copy was sent to me containing the wrong mailing address. Trista condescendingly told me, "Everyone is busy," when I picked up her phone call at 5 PM while I was in between seeing patients at the hospital and mentioned I was preoccupied. She subsequently hung up on me when I asked why USPS tracking was not done for an official document, after saying, "Why don't you ask the post office?" I have never been disrespected or ignored to this degree by an organization that would be profiting from the sale of an instrument I placed in their possession. They have proven to be lackadaisical, disrespectful, woefully unprofessional, and arrogant, needless to say, incompetent. The overarching attitude from this organization has been one of condescension - "my time is more important than yours," "customers come to us, we don't need to advertise," "the name speaks for itself," etc. Only after I was finally done with them - after the psychological stress they had caused spanning 5+ years - and decided to pick up my bow and take it elsewhere did I receive a half-genuine apology, "We don't like to lose anyone's business." I highly advise taking your business (whether consignment or purchasing a stringed instrument) elsewhere. In the same building, there are at least two other premium fine stringed instrument shops: William Harris and Lee on the 5th floor and Carl Becker & Son on the 4th floor. They will respond to your e-mails and phone calls. William Harris & Lee also have a shop in Wilmette if you live in the NW suburbs. I am currently looking for a lower-range violin as I've decided to pick it up again as a hobby. Bein and Fushi will never be getting my business again, even for a bow rehair or purchase of accessories (rosin, strings, etc.) If you have millions of dollars in the bank to spare or are "VIP" in some shape or form (a Rockefeller, Kennedy, Hilary Hahn, Itzhak Perlman, etc.) you may get an iota of respect and common courtesy from Bein and Fushi, but I wouldn't hold my breath. Never again.

    Carl Becker and Son

    Carl Becker and Son

    (2 reviews)

    The Loop

    Jennifer Becker is amazing no one is better at instrument adjusting. She is sweet, nice and cares…read morethat she gets it just right for you.

    Paul Becker seems to me to be an outstanding, honest craftsman with a big ego and poor bedside…read moremanner. Many years ago I practically had to beg him to make a bridge for my modest instrument over his insults directed at the instrument and extremely high quotes engineered to try and scare me away. (Carl Becker bridges are renowned - my violin teacher in Houston would talk lovingly of her own Becker bridge when I was a kid, and I really wanted one.) He did a fantastic job (and charged a fair price for his labor, less than he quoted), and I'm still wowed by the Becker bridge that has adorned that instrument for most of the last decade. He did similarly excellent work replacing the pegs in my instrument a few years after that. Finally, I had a bad crack in my instrument's soundboard at the saddle in line with the bass bar. In this final case, he finally refused outright to do the work. To his credit, in this last case, he solicitously referred me to a lower-brow violin shop in the suburbs (Kenneth Stein Violins in Elmhurst). Kenneth did a very competent and very affordable job fixing the crack the cheap way (from the outside, without taking the top off), and I was back in the running with a violin that sounded and (almost) looked like it had never cracked. Clearly Paul's gruffness was not malicious but more protective of his time and his reputation for extremely high-end violinmaking. The referral seemed on-point to me. Basically, Carl Becker and Son is five stars for the world-renowned work, minus one for the drama. I'd wholeheartedly recommend Paul Becker's repair and tonal adjustment work for an instrument valued at five figures or higher. You might still need some people skills to work with him, though.

    Whitney Osterud Violins - musicalinstrumentsandteachers - Updated May 2026

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