[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.

[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.

[afraidfortherepublic]

As a schoolgirl, I played the violin for 5 years. I Never had my oown instrument, but always used a school issued “loaner”. All of them were “Stradivarii”. You had to study the lable carefully to see that it said “patterned after” Stradivarius. LOL.