Fungi-Infested Violin Beats Strad

livescience ^ | October 2009 | Jeanna Bryner

[JoeProBono]

A violin made of wood treated with a fungus just bested the real McCoy — a Stradivarius crafted by the great master himself in 1711 — in a sound test in front of 180 people.

The fungi-infested violins were created by Francis Schwarze of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research and the Swiss violin maker Michael Rhonheimer.

In the test, which took place at a conference on forest husbandry in Germany (called “Osnabrücker Baumpflegetagen"), British violinist Matthew Trusler played five different instruments behind a curtain to keep the audience blinded.

Trusler played his own strad (worth $2 million) and four violins made by Rhonheimer, two of which were made with fungally-treated wood. A jury of experts, together with the conference participants, judged the tone quality of the violins.

Out of the more than 180 attendees, 90 indicated the tone of the fungally treated violin, Opus 58, to be the best. Trusler's stradivarius snagged second place with 39 votes. And surprisingly, 113 attendees thought the Opus 58 was actually the strad......

[JoeProBono]

The five instruments played during a sound test in Germany, including two made from wood treated with fungi and a stradivarius. (Visually, there is very little difference between them.) Credit: Egmont Seiler.

[JoeProBono]

[CodeToad]

In so many ways this is awesome. I thought the woods necessary to make a fine instrument are not to be found anymore, so a great substitute is a minor miracle.

[proxy_user]

These brief listening tests are not reliable. In order to fully prove this, they would have to listen to a wide variety of music on each violin over a period of weeks or months.

[WellyP]

Most of the wood for the Strads grew during the “Little Ice Age” and had small tight growth rings.

[ZinGirl]

we're trusting a sound test from people who can hear words like “Osnabrücker Baumpflegetagen" and think it sounds correct?

;)

[VeniVidiVici]

Well, it would certainly make Christmas much easier for the musician in your life.

[BobbyT]

I’d be curious to see a blind comparison between the Strads and those crazy carbon fiber violins.

I’m surprised that a material so different would have the same sound characteristics, but apparently they sound very very good.

And because they’re so strong, they need none of the energy-robbing internal bracing wood requires, so they’re very clean and loud (plus you can drop them down the stairs without ruining them).

http://www.luisandclark.com/

[Terabitten]

This sort of test has been done on audiophile and musical instrument websites forever. Some of them are "Which is the real 1959 Les Paul, which is the 1959 Reissue (built in 2003)." Others are "which is the real 1968 Marshall 50 watt amp, which is the Line6 modeler?" My favorite was the "which is the $100 per foot speaker wire, which is a coathanger (literally, a coathanger wire...)"

The results are always the same. The "better" instrument never wins a clear majority, and sometimes is upset by the "lesser," as was the case in the speaker wire test. A majority of listeners actually preferred the sound of coathanger wire to $100 per foot high-end audiophile speaker wire.

The important thing to come away with is this: The vast majority of people can't tell the difference. If you can, then by all means, spend twenty times the money to get that extra one-half of one percent of tone.