Spelman

I tell my students to never use a dampit... Question: by how much does a broken wing tip reduce the value of a violin? Negligible?

Oh Jesus, a marbleized violin...I thought only unfortunate electric guitars suffered this fate

Christophe Landon posted an interior picture (and exterior pictures) of a 1707 Grancino with its carved in bass bar on his Instagram @landonviolins I'm not sure if it's kosher to put up other folks' IG pictures?

I was thinking of forming a Honky Tonk band named "Free Beer Tonight" but I was afraid there'd be an angry riot when we actually took the stage.

I have a fiddle that I used to get autographed--Charlie Daniels, Martin Hayes, Mark O'Connor, Midori, Benny Martin, and a bunch of others--it got too distracting so I erased them.

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On one of my fiddles, I switched to pernambuco from ebony for reasons of tone. That made a noticeable and pleasant change tonally and fortunately worked well with the varnish.

" I was told that based on the locations of the stains and wear from hand oils that this violin most likely belonged to a professional orchestra musician." Lordy, never quite seen verbiage like that before, lol.

At the risk of asking a dumb question, does anyone recognize the maker of any of the violins sporting these chinrests?

Hey, someone just paid 11,000USD for a bunch of grapes... https://www.cnn.com/travel/article/japan-grapes-expensive-fruit-intl-hnk/index.html

And here I thought it read "Und jetzt, drei Mass"

Manfio with the truth here. FWIW, I've recently fallen in love with the Warchal Timbres.

A piezo is going to give you the "angry bee in a jar" sound no matter what. If the player wants an acoustic sound then a mike is the best/only way to go. The best compromise is a blender system which is both a pickup and a mike, you then dial in as much piezo as you need to defeat feedback. Speaking with Sean Smyth some years ago, he swore by a soundpost mounted pickup. I don't remember what brand he was using but here's one website selling them: https://www.violorama.co.uk/soundpost-pickup.php Barbera makes the best sounding, bridge-mounted piezos that I've heard but their bridge is quite chunky and I'm guessing your client would not be happy with the resultant acoustic sound. https://www.barberatransducers.com/violinpickups.html My favorite pre-amp is the Fishman Platinum Stage: https://www.fishman.com/products/series/platinum/platinum-stage-eq-analog-preamp/ Good luck!

Sweet ride

Sort of, they had basically taken the front engine layout as far as it could go and were getting left behind by mid engine cars. Favorite car of mine was a 1979 Chevette, 90hp, <2000lbs, RWD, manual steering, manual brakes. Could not break that thing, great for off roading, had a towing hitch...