C. Vega -> RE: Using fungi to alter wood characteristics (Apr. 8 2013 19:08:06)
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What a lot of people seem to forget, or perhaps didn't know in the first place, is that practically every existing Stradivari violin (viola and cello) has undergone considerable modification over the years, not to mention repairs, restoration, etc. so that they sound very different than they did originally. With the exception of one large viola that originally was part of a set of instruments made for the Medici family and currently resides in a museum in Italy, they have all been considerably altered starting in the early 19th century to make them playable by and therefore useful to modern musicians. The necks and fingerboards have been lengthened and cocked back, the internal structure beefed up, they are fitted with taller bridges and higher tension strings than they originally had along with different tailpieces, pegs and other fittings. All this coupled with the numerous crack repair cleats, various patches, wood doubling, etc. that most of them have makes for instruments that are a far cry from what they were when they were made. Some of them have less than half of their original top wood remaining. The current sound of a Stradivari violin probably has much more to do with the skill of the often unknown but highly skilled craftspeople who performed this work over the centuries than any silly nonsense about fungus, urine, magic varnishes, etc. Perhaps as much if not even more than Stradivari's original work. One example that's currently in the Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection was more or less "built back" to late 17th century specs by a Swiss violin maker a number of years ago. It supposedly wasn't a particularly great specimen in its modern configuration and turned out to be even less impressive as an old style instrument. Contrary to what we've been led to believe, largely by the violin dealers, not every Strad is a sonic masterpiece. Only a small percentage of the existing Stradivari instruments see any regular use. Most of them reside in museum display cases and bank vaults.
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