glebert

I guess I don't get why people feel the need to bash on anyone's instrument, even if they think it is trash. Do you go up to people and tell them their children are ugly and that they will never amount to much? I was raised with the adage "If you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all." If someone wants information on a cheap instruments you could just say "it will never be worth very much, but hopefully it plays well for you." or maybe once it has been determined what an instrument is just let it go and find something productive to do with your time? Me personally I will take being kind over being an expert anyday, and there is no reason you can't be both. Think of the appraiser on The Antiques Roadshow. 95% of what they see is probably junk, but they can evaluate the items with a smile and kindness and usually everyone leaves happy.

Different model, don't know if this is helpful or not. I always thought this model was more elegant looking than some others. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~johnny/data/design.html

I think for many professional luthiers their opinion of an instrument is tied to its monetary value because they can't work at a loss or tell people that a low value instrument is worth fixing (again, from a monetary value perspective). I am not a professional luthier, not even an amateur, just a guy who hacks on low value cellos sometimes.

Kristen, I am glad that you play your violins and enjoy them. There are some on this forum who seem to have lost the enjoyment of playing music, if they ever knew it.

Think it will improve in another 10-12 years, or is "store room" the new dustbin?

I am always surprised what cheap stuff people will fake, and how good they can be. Knock off guitar strings, golf club grips, and WD-40. Supposedly Martin keeps changing the packaging on their strings to stay ahead of counterfeiters, There was also an apocryphal story of an audit at the WD-40 maintenance department found they were using fake stuff themselves on the machines that made the real stuff.

My wife wants to know what music he is playing in the first segment.

From what I have been told here dendro only works on tops, so if the top has been replaced then all bets are off, right? Don't know that it happens alot, but it is perhaps one more limitation. It would be nice to be able to date all parts through something like C14 testing (fyi, I really don't know anything about that either) to see if all the parts are at least x years old.

It's probably in such great shape because it was too small for anyone to play!

Reminds me of Willie Nelson's guiter (Trigger), which has great big holes and cracks, and he won't let his luthier do any more than the bare minimum necessary to keep it from falling apart.

If the dark varnish is an attempt at patina/antiquing/relicing would that color have been done last? If this was done with spirit varnish I wonder if it could be removed or at least significantly lightened just with alcohol. The only instrument I have refinished was a student cello with spirit varnish and I got most of the color off by wiping down with alcohol on a scotchbrite type pad.

Honestly asking because I don't know. If high throughput is a goal, are there efficiencies to be gained by doing multiple instruments at a time and do ribs for a week, tops for a week, etc. rather than doing each instrument sequentially?

I hadn't really thought much about the economics of making instruments before. This article (https://www.forbes.com/forbes/2009/0413/081-luxury-instruments-maestro.html#42f5120b53f1) from 2009 says Zygmuntowitcz was selling violins for about $53k, and that he only did six instruments a year. Not saying that isn't a decent amount of revenue, but with an apprentice and a five story brownstone in Brooklyn the pay is probably less than a junior trader makes, which is kind of depressing. I could see how this would push some makers to get a bigger workshop and hire more workers to sell more instruments including lower grade ones.

Kind of looks to me like the area around the bass bar has been scraped down, maybe it had an integral bar that was removed and replaced with a glue in?

AFAIK all of the old instruments have been torn apart and fixed and rebuilt over the years. They were often changed significantly in the process. For violins the necks have often been lengthened, and the large cellos have been reduced in size to make them more playable. There was a thread a while back where someone discussed that the when fixing a very valuable instrument the shop would be required to obtain special insurance which was ridiculously expensive. I would guess the top shops may already have this, but it is still going to be expensive and get added to the cost of repairs.