Rue

Hahaha! Good one!

Thanks for the news! I hope Ray Chen enjoys playing on it!

Adults are different than children...because our minds become another powerful variable. What we actually need often is overriden by want we think we need - and/or by what we want. Go ahead and buy what you want. It should decent quality AND you will want to play it...AND...you will happily bask in the warm glow of it all!

I've seen/listened to them being played. Was a long time ago though. And they have been played on a fairly regular basis (irregular basis?) over the years...although not during the last little while. Time to dust them off again!

We get very little press...need all the help we can get... https://news.usask.ca/articles/colleges/2022/rare-instruments-see-light-of-day-with-new-series,-discovering-the-amatis.php

It doesn't look Chinese...although it could be. I dunno...I'd try and butcher this one before I looked for a "better" one to butcher. Chinese issues...Markie issues...either way you'll learn a lot.

LOL! I missed seeing the Olaf video! How could that have happened?

Interesting! And I hope this video hadn't been posted yet! Sorry if it was. A little name dropping. Titebond for the fingerboard. Sandpaper. Guitars (lots) in the background. Still...it did show a couple of things done differently. The video itself was nicely put together! Still - probably shouldn't have had a sound overlay while they were playing the instrument. What's up with that?

No doubt. But guessing the wrong, er, abattoir, isn't useful.

Doesn't look like Yita. FWIW, it's become fairly "standard" background approach to photographing instruments.

What a fun experience!

Hmm. Isn't it just "better" to shape the pegs to the cello versus shaping the cello to the (plastic) pegs? ...and no need to mention the unnecessary use of plastic in a situation where plastic is neither better nor longer lasting ...nope...won't mention any of that...

A little tired maybe...busy season at work and all, and it's been brutally hot, which doesn't help...but not too badly overall. Thank you for asking. Er...why are you asking?

This keeps happening in MN. It is fun to try to sleuth out a violin puzzle! Why is there this hole? Why is this thingy crooked? Why doesn't this align the way it should? But I am certain, in most instances, we're just overthinking it all - and we're coming to erroneous conclusions based on what we know from our current existence. While there may not be overly-realistic reports of what life was like in every city, town and village back in the 1500s, 1600s, 1700s, etc., we still have a reasonably good idea of what life was like, or we should. And we shouldn't forget the effects of time on any object. Things get distorted over 300 years. How could they not? I think sometimes that mysterious 2 mm measurement that can't obviously be accounted for, was likely just an 'oopsie' at the time it happened...and then it aged! Just because we may be obsessing about some minutiae now...doesn't mean they were obsessing about it back then. Maybe they had better things to do than repair a minor error that didn't affect function...like avoiding the plague...or the taxman...or yet another long-term visit from the in-laws...