Swiss Wood Solutions: Sustainable pegs made from wood from certified forests in the heart of Europe

As a violin maker, you know how important it is to choose the right wood to ensure the functional and tonal quality of an instrument. Traditionally, ebony is used for fingerboards and fittings such as tailpieces, chin rests or pegs. However, ebony of sufficient quality has become scarce. 

Domestic wood from Swiss forestry instead of tropical wood from overexploitation

Overexploitation of tropical rainforests has made high-quality ebony rare. To protect the remaining forests, international import and trade restrictions (like CITES) and regulations (Lacey Act, EUDR) are increasing. That is why Swiss Wood Solutions AG has developped Sonowood®.

For Sonowood we use a patented thermohydromechanical process to densify wood sourced from sustainable, local Swiss forestry. It is therefore entirely free from tropical woods and consists of 100% wood, no adhesives, resins or other plastic components are used. Sonowood stands out for its exceptionally high conduction velocity, hardness, and strength. We have been using this eco-friendly material for several years to craft fingerboards, tailpieces, and chinrests – combining CNC precision with expert hand-finishing.

Now available: Pegs and Endpins made from Sonowood

After several years of development we are now able to offer pegs and endpins for violin, viola and cello made from Sonowood. Like the whole Sonowood product range, our pegs and endpins have been developed in close collaboration with luthiers and musicians. For now, we are offering an elegant Mirecourt type model in close to finish conical thickness with the following parameters:

Violin: Pegs: 7.65mm shaft; Endpins: 8.5mm shaft

Viola: Pegs: 8.4mm shaft; Endpins: 9.0mm shaft

Cello: Pegs: 12.4mm shaft

The material’s torsional resistance, dimensional stability and adhesion are excellent, while one can comfortably trim them with a peg-shaper.

Our current pegs and endpin assortment consists of items made from Sonowood Maple, Sonowood Beech native and Sonowood Black Beech. In addition we offer a further alternative to tropical woods with pegs/endpins made from Ebonprex: Ebonprex is a black-coloured, unidirectionally glued beech wood laminate and is a cost-effective alternative to Sonowood.

Complete Sets for a uniform and elegant appearance

The newly launched pegs and endpins perfectly round off our range and enable us to offer complete accessory sets made from a single type of wood. This fulfils a customer request that we have often received in recent years and gives the luthier the chance to create an instrument with a uniform and elegant appearance.

Sonowood pegs and all other accessories are available in our Webshop. In addition, a selection of our most popular fittings can be found also in the catalogues of our partners Holfter GmbH and PetzVienna.

What’s next?

We would be happy to have as many luthiers as possible on board of our journey towards more sustainability in violin making. We are therefore also working on other peg models. For example, our Mirecourt model for restoration work is already available in Ebonprex for violin, viola and cello (each with a shaft that is 0.8 mm thicker), and we are also working on peg models other than the Mirecourt model.

After all, we are convinced that sustainability and quality are not mutually exclusive, but that - thanks to Sonowood and Ebonprex - it is possible to build high-quality instruments that are nonetheless free from tropical timber.

Link to the Sonowood Webshop: https://shop.sonowood.swisswoodsolutions.ch