effect on the instrument's tone, depending on its position and the tension of its fit. Part of adjusting the tone of the instrument is moving the sound post by small amounts laterally and along the long axis of the instrument using a tool called a sound post setter. Since the sound post is not glued and is held in place by string tension and being gently wedged between the top and back, it may fall over if all the strings are slackened at once. Running under the opposite side of the bridge is the bass bar. While the shape and mass of the bass bar affect tone, it is fixed in position and not so adjustable as the sound post. It is fitted precisely to the inside of the instrument at a slight angle to the centre joint. On many German trade instruments it used to be common fashion not to fit a bass bar but to leave a section of the front uncarved and shape that to resemble one. During the baroque era, bass bars were much shorter and thinner. Tailpiece The tailpiece may be wood, metal, carbon fiber, or plastic, and anchors the strings to the lower bout of the violin by means of the tailgut, nowadays most often a loop of stout nylon monofilament that rides over the saddle (a block of ebony set into the edge of the top) and goes around the endpin. The endpin fits into a tapered hole in the bottom block. Most often the material of the endpin is chosen to match the other fittings, for example, ebony, rosewood or boxwood. Very often the E string will have a fine tuning lever worked by a small screw turned by the fingers. Fine tuners may also be applied to the other strings and are sometimes built into the tailpiece. Fine tuners are usually used with solid metal or composite strings that may be difficult to tune with pegs alone; they are not used with gut strings, which have greater flexibility and don't respond adequately to the very small changes in tension of fine tuners. Some violinists, particularly beginners or those who favor metal strings, use fine tuners on all four strings. Using a fine tuner on the E string or built-in fine tuners limits the extent to which their added mass affects the sound of the instrument. Pegs At the scroll end, the