While inspecting my violin after it arrived I found scratches on the body under the tailpiece. Here's a picture showing the scratches after the tailpiece was removed.
These scratches are the result of the previous owner and myself over using the fine tuners on the tailpiece. The important thing to note is that while fine tuners are very useful you have to be conscious of their proximity to the body of the violin. These scratches would have been prevented if the pegs were used [more] in conjunction with the fine tuners. You can easily over tighten one of the tuners and split the body of the violin! Don't ever tune your strings to a pitch higher than what they're designed for - use an electronic tuner or tuning fork.
Now here's my confession: I think I caused the deeper scratch on the right (in the location of the A string)... remember I said I popped the A string? Well in hindsight, I think I may have tightened the fine tuner too much. In short... I was toying with the pegs and the A peg seemed too loose, so I attempted to retighten the string using the fine tuner. I really lucked out because if the A string hadn't popped, I would have destroyed the body of my violin before even playing it! I took it to a local shop and the damage is cosmetic (whew... lol). He also showed me a different type of fine tuner that attaches to the strings themselves instead of the tailpiece:
I currently use this type of fine tuner:
There'll be a day when I won't use a fine tuner for G, D, and A until then I'll use the pegs more and take extra care when tuning.
