Man uses CAT scanner to copy Stradivarius

Hardware ^ | 11-30-11 | Caleb Cox

[afraidfortherepublic]

[Zuben Elgenubi]

fiddlesticks!

[afraidfortherepublic]

Talkin about you!

[luvbach1]

Great idea!

[El Sordo]

Cool.

[Springfield Reformer]

burning wood samples

Burned samples from what? A Stradivarius? How can that be?

[I cannot think of a name]

Somehow I have a funny feeling that all these efforts will continue to fail.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Maybe they have some ruined samples that can be sacrificed... that’s all I can think.

I’d bet it makes little difference what they were finished with, and more difference what the ultimate dimensions (including the thicknesses) are. Sometimes violin makers find that the unfinished instrument sounds better in testing, but they can’t leave them that way as the wood would deteriorate.

[HiTech RedNeck]

The team has so far assembled and varnished three full replicas, which members say sound "amazingly similar to originals in their sound quality".

Doesn't sound a lot like failure to me. Brute force technology (the only way they could have done this in the past would have been to sacrificially disassemble a Strad) looks like it has won the day.

[TsonicTsunami08]

I want one!

[HiTech RedNeck]

Now they’ve reverse engineered the dimensions, it probably won’t be long until China is turning out fiberglass versions at $25 a pop. Another mystery down the drain....

[newheart]

When my mother died I was given my grandfather’s ‘fiddle.’ I was honored as his playing, though I never heard it, was the stuff of family legend. After I got the violin home I looked inside it. When I saw the label ‘Stradivarius’ I thought I had won the lottery. Unfortunately a few minutes on the Internet revealed that hundreds, if not thousands, of knockoff Strads were made in the 20s and 30s. The fact that it was kept in an old flour sack should have been my first clue.

Somehow I expect that even the modern efforts, with all their technology will discover that it is not possible to replicate a Stradivarius. But you cannot blame them for trying.

[diverteach]

Kind of amazed at the fact that the library of congress has one.

[Valpal1]

They keep it in Warehouse 13 with the Ark of the Covenant.

[TheBattman]

Now they’ve reverse engineered the dimensions, it probably won’t be long until China is turning out fiberglass versions at $25 a pop.

They will be all over eBay at 99 cents + $129 shipping...

[ResponseAbility]

****I’d bet it makes little difference what they were finished with, and more difference what the ultimate dimensions (including the thicknesses) are****

The finish on acoustic instruments has a significant part to play(no pun intended...ok it was intended)in the final sound of an instrument. For example, a clear finish and a satin finish will make identical models sound different(less brightness for the silk finish).

Between the finish and the age of the original Stradivarius, it will be difficult to match the sound even with correct dimensions and woods. Also the sound of those Strads has changed over the years, so nobody alive today really knows what a contemporary instrument really sounded like.

Of course these are small differences and not very noticeable to most people, but the players can easily tell.

[ResponseAbility]

I wonder what it cost to do 1000 CAT scans? How much do hospitals charge for 1000 CAT scans?

[ArmstedFragg]

I suspect it was 1000 slices of a single CAT scan.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Satin and clear are mainly optical effects. Unless the stiffness was different or the thickness, a blind test shouldn’t know the difference.

[HiTech RedNeck]

Once someone puts enough trouble into a full computer simulation, with the brute horsepower behind it, it wouldn't be hard to imagine instruments sounding better than Strads being created, and CNC machined. And as the model was tweaked, you could play your virtual fiddle from, say, a keyboard till you got it just the way you liked. It's because no eccentric multimillionaires have sunk money into it, that it hasn't happened. Die-hard purists would never concede that the mystical Strad had been topped, and would not buy one of the new violins.