Hi Nicola, from my point of view, it depends on couple of different things: *how much do u play *what kind of strings do u use/what do u want to get out of your violin STEEL core- definitely most durable, stay in tune, bright sparkling sound(e.g. Pirastro Chromcore) GUT core- supposed to have the ¨warmest¨ sound, lowest longevity, usually quite expensive, in my opinion not worth it(unless u playing some specific music on the side other than jazz/improv- e.g. baroque music), with these you just spend half of the time trying to get your instrument in tune SYNTHETIC core- something in between, nice full round sound and thx to the synthetic material more durable than gut strings(e.g. Dominants) I´ve spent many years playing the full-metal Pirastro, cca 6 months back I started playing with John Pearse Artiste Mezzo as i wanted to try something different and more appropriate for ¨fiddle¨playing. sound is nice but the JP strings reguire much more maintenance(keeping it always clean) than the steel ones. it´s an alchemy.... but if u havent changed your strings for lets say half a year and ur practicing regurarly, i would say its definitely time for a change hope this helps a bit 🤞

when we´re talking about staying motivated to practice, for me, diversity is the key. e.g. after a couple of days of practicing something hard and strenuous, I just try to break the pattern and spend day or two playing jazz ballads working on my tone and on the ability of trying to say something meaningful with just a couple of notes

enhancing the jazz vocabulary, being more versatile

Hey Matt thx, yeah you are right, slurs are still my nemesis , so far i´ve been enjoying playing as much as possible without them, as it gave me more oportunity to practice ghost notes and the swingfeel. now im working on Grappelli´s original Minor Swing solo so im trying to do all the slurs and stuff which should be there...still feels against the grain, but whatever, its just practice i guess...✌️✌️