20-year old cheap bow - rehair or replace?

[Beer of the Bass]

I'm a fairly casual player these days, absolutely no classical aspirations, I either dip into the local free improv scene or play in folky acoustic or singer/songwriter type situations. I do bow a certain amount though, either for more melodic parts, textural stuff in improv or to work on my intonation when practicing. 

I play German bow and have had the same no-name wooden student bow for about 20 years now, a fairly generic Chinese one. I've had it rehaired in that time, but it's quite a bit overdue for another. Though I did some DIY repairs to it during lockdown in 2020 (when everything was shut) just to keep practicing- the tip facing has been reattached with CA glue and the wedge at the tip is a homemade replacement I whittled from a piece of maple scrap. I don't if those plus the low value of the bow might make it marginal for another rehair. 

I could look at a new bow, but in my budget it would be a <£200 student bow. There are probably more options today than when I got this one, but that's still not getting me into nice bow territory by a long way. I'd probably be looking at things like the Vingobow from China, importer brands like Gewa, possibly the P&H carbon bow, or I think Bassbags have Romanian made student bows. 

I know there's a rehairer just a couple of miles away from me, I could possibly drop in with my bow and see if they think it's viable for a rehair. But I'd be curious to hear the opinions of the Basschat massiv. 

[NickA]

if you're happy with it get it rehaired. It's 10s of pounds not 100s.  they'll replace the wooden wedges and who gives a monkeys that the tip is super glued on.

 

still if you fancy an upgrade, nows an opportunity, but you won't get much improvement for under £200.

Edited 6 hours ago by NickA

[Beer of the Bass]

Yeah, I did some looking around, I gather that the wedges are routinely replaced during a rehair and the tip facing is often installed using CA glue anyway, so it doesn’t look like I've butchered it in a way that would affect rehairing particularly. 

Bowspeed have some likely looking options if I was able to step up to £300 or so, and will send them out on approval. So what I may do is have the current bow rehaired for now and see about clearing out some bits and pieces for a bow fund. Then if I was to try couple on approval later in the year, I'd at least have the one I'm already familiar with in decent playing condition for comparison.