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The Violin Makers Association of Arizona International will hold its 50th anniversary convention in Tucson next week, attracting luthiers from around the U.S. and Canada.

Crafters will converge on the Randolph Park Hotel and Suites (formerly the Clarion) with their newly fashioned violins, cellos, violas and bows in hand, hoping that the judges will bestow on them their seal of approval. The association, the oldest continually operating violin-makers' association in the country, is the only one to host an annual convention and competition, said association treasurer Bill Barnitz.

"Most of our members are passionate about making instruments, but most also come from all walks of life and careers, like doctors, lawyers, engineers," organizer Connie Fontenot, who lives in remote Ozark National Forest in Arkansas, said in an e-mail message.

Convention events including workshops are open to the public, but the biggest event for non-violin-makers usually is the open house, to be held Wednesday. That's when folks can see the various handcrafted instruments, touch them, strum them and buy them if they like, said Barnitz, who has been a member of the group since 1976.

Barnitz is responsible not only for the group holding its annual convention in Tucson, but also for its very existence. Back in 1982, the association was a one-man show, and the man running it was about to call it quits. Barnitz stepped in to revive the group and reorganized it so that a board of directors ran the group. He also moved the annual conventions from Globe-Miami to Tucson.

Barnitz is more of a hobbyist when it comes to violins. He's made only a few since his first one in 1983 and has a "couple of fiddles on the mold." One day, he would like to sell his work.

That's one of the attractions of the association's annual contests: The recognition from winning a prize at the Arizona convention adds to a maker's credibility — and the violin's price tag.

Retired Tucson physicist John Dettloff, who has been making violins since the 1980s, said craftsmen often command $3,000 to $10,000 per instrument.

Dettloff has been a member of the Violin Makers Association for 25 years. He had played violin as a youngster, and the construction of the instrument always fascinated him.

"I started looking and wondering how this little one-pound box of wood can make such tones," he explained.

Throughout the 1980s and early '90s, Dettloff dabbled in a workshop at his home. When he retired in the late 1990s, he devoted a bit more time to it. He estimates in a year's time he completes one instrument and gets about halfway through a second.