Michael Darnton

Also, are you sure this isn't a viola bow? What does it weigh?

Whether to buy it depends very much on what it is and what it costs, but I am not particularly impressed.

@Dorisch I'm sure a lot of it is how that one factor interacts with both setup style and expectations. It's just one thing from many adjustments.

My personal experience is that gut/Sacconi/kevlar runs (gut) full, warm, broad /(Sacconi) somewhat brighter, less full /(Kevlar) tending towards laser-like and bright. Generally we remove kevlar from violins, replacing with Sacconis, and use kevlar only on violas and cellos, where the broadness of a Sacconi can work in the wrong direction on instruments that already tend towards fuzziness. In our shop, to us kevlar usually sounds too bright and "empty" on violins, like a post that doesn't fit to the back. In regard to the last comment, kevlar on violins, I'm always wary of the violin that sounds "louder" than the others in the sense of, well, really, you wish it were farther away, like in the next room with the door closed, because it's actually simply offensive and noisy.

The pad is for your shoulders protection. The hardware should sit far enough away from the violin to never touch it.

The pad is on upside down. The 1920s was a popular time for this type of creative solution.

@Jeffrey Holmes I bought a Nurnberger VC bow at Wm Lewis in 1963. The salesman came out with a bundle of about 30 new bows ($185@) with a string around it and dumped them on a heap on the chair next to me. Different times! (And later he brought out one "real", not current factory, antique Albert Nurnberger, like new, $175, which was a lot better and the one I bought. After he assured me that buying a used bow was OK. Again, different times .)

Instruments and bows did not used to have the same value and originality was not respected as it is now. Today if someone breaks a top we fix it. Not so 200 years ago. Right now there's a Montagnana cello for sale at auction with Guad top. I've seen two Amatis with Gagliano tops, and lots of other similar combinations. Now we piece them back the other like jigsaw puzzles if necessary. We don't throw out even a sliver of wood if we can't help it.

Seeing that appraisal flashes me back to the question of what "top shops" means. I think that OP's definition may not be tight enough.

Harp tailpieces and normal after length adjustments are attacking different concrete problems. I use different sized tailpieces to fill the gap and prevent movement near the saddle on violins, where it's usually a negative force. On cellos it's often a positive force, but I'm sure my model for that is different from Don's. Cello rules are different and often opposite from violins for many setup issues.

The first thing I'd try is to flatten off any belly on the bridge, taking weight from the middle, but a tendency towards the kind of sound you describe is inherent in the model.

In the past you could buy a lot of that kind of thing from China via eBay. I went and looked and could not find a single thing; the same with AliExpress. I guess they saturated their market.

As with tightening screw in place, there is a point where spreading the legs suddenly becomes much more difficult and that's what I set mine to. I use pieces of chopsticks. It's easy to pick up an extra when you get sushi and pretty soon you have a lifetime supply. I prefer the soft spruce type, not bamboo. They cut easily by rolling them under the knife and you get a good centered cut. I had one of those fancy metal leg spreaders. Hit it with my knife and put a nick in the knife in the first 5 minutes-- I threw it in the trash right then. Make sure to plane the front and backs of the feet to thickness and perfectly parallel before you put in the stick and then adjust the stick when they're in place so that they hold the feet parallel again. If you're casual about this, the feet can get twisted relative to each other and that can lead to fitting problems. I don't think the metal device pays much attention to that nor does it allow you to adjust it.

Just a point that professional shops keep a wide variety of violin tailpieces available and with room in them to be cut shorter to bridge intermediate lengths so that this is not really the case for careful adjustment specialists working on violins. For cellos there are many different tailpieces available (not to mention hanger materials and their precise placement) that affect the tone in large ways, so the problem is rarely as simple as after length. The adjuster who approaches this problem philosophically or pseudoscientificly rather than practically will inevitably be left in the dust.

The standard in the business is not directed towards getting the colors "right ", unfortunately. It's directed towards making the violins look glamorous and I fight with this all the time with my partners. That means too much saturation, too much red/orange, and too much contrast, and heaven help us should there be even a trace of green anywhere in the picture, although that's very common in real violins as an undertone. @Peterhamm You should remember that what you're taking pictures of is not really the varnish but the varnish's effect on the wood and the more directions light you put on from, the broader those light sources are, and the more different directions they come from the more boring the wood looks. The best light ever was the old incandescent bulbs in 10 or 12-inch reflectors, one on each side slightly high, high and far enough off to the side to not make any reflections. These old reflectors threw a light with a hotspot that you could point to the bottom of the violin (which was farther away from the violin and darker) and light it up more to make up for the extra distance. Now with modern lights it's actually harder to take good pictures and I don't personally like the result.