GeorgeH

This frog is from a bow by a very good German maker, c. 1880. The stick is in excellent condition. My questions are regarding the restoration of the frog: 1) How does damage like this happen? 2) Is it possible to repair to be invisible or almost invisible? 3) The mother of pearl in the slider and remaining eye is almost bleached white-looking and the surface appears deteriorated. I'd like to replace them. Is there a historically-correct color I should use? Was the original a smooth white?

Yes.

Thanks for posting this, Carl.

In some cases, packaging can make counterfeiting more difficult.

In the absence of proof, each person will decide if they want to choose to believe it or not.

Any hummingbirds flying around Mars yet? Violins are not hummingbirds either.

Unless and until anyone can show that "the sound timbre of 'Definition: Old Cremonese instruments before 1745" is "so special," then "the thing" you are searching for will be as elusive as a leprechaun. So, yes, it is a tricky task. In other words, if one can find the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, then one can probably find the leprechaun who put it there.

It only shows that the Emmerson Quartet sounded different when playing different instruments. Eight (8) non-random samples from two (2) makers played by four (4) people is utterly inadequate to prove the general statement that "old" instruments have a different sound quality than "modern" instruments, particularly when "old" and "modern" are not even well-defined terms in this context. We clearly view this from different perspectives.

Branding is everything! And I tip my hat to you, sir, because you have mastered that.

1. The modern hummingbird has evolved at least over 30 million years. "The world's oldest known modern hummingbird fossils have been discovered in Germany. The tiny skeletons are also the first modern-type hummingbird fossils ever found in the Old World. These creatures, with strikingly similar resemblances to today's hummingbirds, lived in present-day Germany more than 30 million year ago." https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2004-05/aaft-wom043004.php 2. No, according to NASA, it took 6 years to develop and build the Mars helicopter Ingenuity.

What is "old?" What is "modern?" What is "new?" If "old instruments do have a different sound quality," then "different" compared to what? "Old instruments" cannot be compared to what they sounded like when they were new. The number of hours they have been played is highly variable, and cannot be determined. Trying to mimic the effects of playing using mechanical devices has not been shown to have any effect, positive or negative. There is really no proof that "old" instruments have a different sound quality than "modern" instruments, or, furthermore, that a "different sound qua

Humming birds took millions of years to develop, but how long did it take humans to design, build, and deploy the helicopter that is now flying around Mars? By using AI design algorithms (such as evolutionary algorithms) and reproducible synthetic materials, I am quite certain that violins and bows that work "really well" could be designed and manufactured in a fairly short time frame. They might not look like violins that we are used to, however. They might not even be wholly acoustic. The primary problem is human: there is no agreement on what the specifications for "really well"

"Guadagnigni" is different than "Guadagnini." And the spelling in the listing is "Guadagnigni."

I wonder if it can or will be applied to making better violins from carbon-fiber or other synthetic materials where you can control material uniformity.

The "pre-screening of the new ones to filter for the better sounding ones" simply reflects the bias of the evaluators as what constitutes "better sounding," right? It would suggest that if they had a similar selection of random "old ones" to select from, they would likely pick the ones with the same "better sounding" characteristics as the new ones they selected. Maybe they prefer "loud and buzzy."