Getting to know my Pardessus BD

This arrived in January for my 50th birthday ; a 4 string chromatically fretted Pardessus BD from Ken Bloom, with strings in "cello" order (Tuning isGDAd) . Initially I made do with the bow from a student violin we have in the house, but having read up on the advice on the Yahoo BD group I took delivery of a caron fibre viola bow last week, which is making a great difference to my playing.

I love the rich tone of the bowed strings and we were both stunned that such a small bodied instrument could have such a resonant and commanding voice. It has been too many years (30+) since I played a bowed instrument so I am concentrating on right hand bowing techniques and have set myself some practice regime (mainly scales up and down and picking out simple tunes). I also have a contact number of a friend-of-a-friend who is a fine fiddle player and I am going to contact him for a kind of "consultation".

It isa little frustrating feeling like a total beginner on a new instrument (again) but I am sure I will get the hang of it.