JacksonMaberry

Carbon sounds like carbon, more or less, at least to my ear. I have a friend who's in the market for a carbon cello. He tried the MF, the L&C, and the new Glasser, and found the Glasser and the L&C extremely close. Check out the Glassers if you can get your hands on one, could save you a boatload.

Where it's at it's thickest, especially on the back, it appears to obscure the figure of the wood. Possibly just an artifact of photography in this case?

Damn, that's lovely. What, in your view, accounts for the opacity of the varnish?

Absolutely.

I'm with you, to a large degree. That said, I think it's worth giving tradition a little kick in the arse here and there. In this stuffy classical making/playing world, it's often the iconoclasts that get the most attention, I'll point out. Love them or hate them, everyone who knows piano or organ music knows who Yuja Wang and Cameron Carpenter are, and they don't lack for gigs or cash. Gewurtztraminer and Pinot Gris wines typically manifest as white wines, but their skins are anything but. If you want to serve me a well made Cabernet blanc, I'm not going to turn up my nose.

I'm a bit surprised at all the wood policing taking place, especially as it concerns block/lining materials. It's not as though spruce and willow are the only woods for such purpose found in 17th and 18th century masterworks. Stainer used walnut, for crying out loud! It would never have occurred to me to even try walnut for such an application, yet it worked for a man who was Europe's favorite maker for nearly 200 years. Spruce and willow are both outstanding for the purpose, but it's a big world with a lot of woods. Some are easier to get some places than others. Some folks want something lighter than either - I use Paulownia sometimes for linings and corner blocks, lets me drop nearly 10g of garland weight over the willow I have from Chambers. To each their own, I guess.

Hopefully I can see this one in person when I get back to WA. I have friends in B-ham, so I get up that way once or twice a year.

A little bit of black heat shrink tubing on the hook works ok too. No matter what you use, it'll probably have to be removed should you ever decide to remove the fine tuner from the tailpiece.

Those damned expensive little pieces of plastic Wittner sells for their Hill style fine tuners are worth it. A spot of cyanoacrylate to hold them onto the hook is advised.

Paulownia is also light, cheap, quite stable, and glues well.

I'd say DB is right about overstand existing on baroque fiddles - it just doesn't manifest in quite the same way. On a baroque fiddle, neck is placed in such a way that the overstand (usually but not always equal to the thickness of the edge) rises above the plane of the ribs. You can see this on the 1679 Stainer Hargrave wrote about and the one in the NMM, both in essentially original condition. On modern-setup fiddles, the overstand rises above the plane of the edge, instead. So it's a matter of which plane the overstand, er, stands over.

Aussie Blackwood and Koa are both acacia, but aren't otherwise related. I have a small stock of some Big Island Koa my grandfather cut in the early 50s. All slab, some with unimaginable figure and some rather plain. I imagine I will someday make a violin or two with it, but right now I just look at it and think of my grandpa.

That Myrtle looks incredible. I'd build with that in a heartbeat if it weren't too dense.

I swear by Aquila, especially the Venice twist for the D and A. Heard nice things recently about Kürschner, but haven't laid hands on them. La Folias and Toros are good too

Dipentene is great for oil varnish, and smells pretty good. I have an ancient copal oil varnish from Joe Robson that calls for diluting with a bit of ethanol as well as turps.