We knew the market.
That is exactly why we build something else.

mezzo-forte is a workshop for carbon fiber string instruments, developed and built in Werther, Westphalia, Germany. It grew out of years inside the trade, a clear view of how little was moving, and a decision to change something ourselves.

Who started this.

If you know a market, you know what it is missing.

We did not look at string instruments from the outside. We spent years inside the trade, as importers, finishers and dealers in high quality wooden instruments. We went to the trade fairs, met the makers, built the ranges, advised the players.

And year after year we saw the same thing: the same faces, the same products, the same arguments. A market that had not moved in its fundamental principles for centuries, and showed no intention of doing so.

Standing still is not a mark of quality. It is a sign that nobody is asking the right questions.

In 2009 we started asking them. Not as academics, not as outsiders, but as people who knew the market inside out and understood exactly what it could not deliver.

• 2002Founded in Werther, Westphalia. Import, finishing and distribution of high quality wooden string instruments.
• 2009Development of carbon fiber string instruments begins. The question: what becomes possible if you rethink a string instrument without the constraints of wood?
• 2011First instruments reach the market. Behind them lie two years of development by trial and error, for the violin alone.
• 2015German Musical Instrument Award, the first carbon instrument in the history of the competition to receive it. Assessed by an independent jury. Assessed blind.
• 2021Joint research project with two companies and two university institutes. Around 200 different violin tops are built, measured physically and compared.
• 2023Second generation of the violin, based on those measurements. Twelve years after the first instrument, starting over again.
• 2026Relaunch on 1 September. New line names mf | pure, mf | core, mf | solo and mf | atelier, a new pricing structure and a new brand presence.
• todayTwelve people in Werther. Four product lines. Instruments in over 50 countries. And still wooden instruments at streicherwelt.de, because we know what makes a good instrument, whatever it is made of.

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Twelve people. One conviction.

Twelve people in Werther: instrument makers, engineers, technicians, commercial staff. Nobody here ended up here. Everybody came.

You notice it in the things you never see. Bridge, sound post and strings are set for each instrument individually, not to a formula. Every production step is documented and can still be traced years later, against your serial number. And before an instrument goes into its case, it gets played. Not sampled. Played.

You do not build carbon fiber string instruments in Westphalia because it is the easy path. You build them because you cannot stop trying to make them better.

No instrument leaves our workshop without having passed through hands that understand what a professional musician needs.

We have invested substantially over recent years: CNC milling, spray booth, curing chamber, blasting cabinet, precision tooling. Not to work faster, but so that what reaches you needs no allowances made for it.

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Every step in our own hands.

Our instruments are built entirely in Werther, from the first layer of carbon fiber to the final play test. Every stage stays with us: cutting, vacuum infusion, lacquering, assembly, setup.

That is not the norm in this industry. For us it is the condition that allows us to stand behind every single instrument we make.

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Why carbon.

You pick it up and you do not put it down again. That is the reason nobody in this trade talks about, and it is the first one that counts.

Black, deep, polished. The weave runs under the lacquer, and when you turn the instrument the pattern travels with the light. It looks like it came out of another decade, the one that has not arrived yet. At the interval, half the section is standing around you wanting a look.

Then the bow. The tone is there at once. No pulling, no hunting for it, no warming up. You think a phrase and it arrives. What you used to spend on the instrument goes into the music instead.

And then the part you only notice months later: it is always like this. Unheated church in January, open air in July, eleven hours in a cargo hold. The instrument does not care. You tune, and you play.

Carbon fiber is climate stable and exceptionally resonant. A material that until a few decades ago appeared almost exclusively in aerospace and motorsport. We developed it for the concert hall. Not as a replacement for wood, but as a distinct answer to demands wood was never made for.

Warm, brilliant and powerful in tone. Indestructible on tour.

That is not a slogan. It is the verdict of professionals who play daily on stage and in rehearsal, under conditions that push traditional instruments to their limits.

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Development does not stop here.

The violin is the hardest instrument in the family. It has the widest frequency range and has to deliver a tonal spectrum from warm to brilliant at the same time. A material optimized for one of those qualities loses the other. Achieving both together was the real work, and it took two years.

In 2021 we did it again. A joint project with two companies and two university institutes produced around 200 different violin tops, which were measured physically and compared. The best one went into the successor model of 2023.

Starting over twelve years after the first instrument, while that first model is selling and carries an award, is not something you do for marketing reasons. You do it because you want to know whether it can be done better.

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Award winning sound. Judged blind.

Picture the room: darkened, so that nobody can see what they are holding. The jurors play the instruments themselves. No maker, no material, no expectation. Only the sound.

In 2015 mezzo-forte walked out of that room with the German Musical Instrument Award, the first carbon instrument in the history of the competition.

This is not a design award and not an innovation prize for a new material. It is a judgement on sound, made by people whose profession is judging sound, and who did not know what they were playing. Which means this is the one claim on this page you do not have to take from us.

The award went to the company, not to a single model. It covers every line.

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Four lines. One standard.

mezzo-forte builds instruments for a full range of requirements, from a reduced entry point to acoustically selected instruments for solo work. Every line is built in Werther, to the same standards, from the same materials.

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What we believe.

We do not claim carbon is better wood. We still sell wooden instruments at streicherwelt.de, to players looking for exactly that. We know what makes a good instrument.

And we know what this market has been missing for decades.

Whether we are right about that is not decided in front of a screen. It is decided with a bow in your hand. Until then, everything on this page is a claim.

Developed and built in Werther, Westphalia, Germany.
Played by professionals in over 50 countries.