Three13

Built in body disposal!

My girlfriend is a bit of a giraffe and has been using Wave chinrests on the two violins that she likes best - they seem to have helped with her neck and shoulder pain.

I have an early 19th Century English or Scottish violin with a similar through neck. I also see what might be a Lockey Hill-style gouge in the back plate, although it's a bit oblong and far from the center of the plate compared to what I've seen. The inscription is nonsense, as the last of the Amati had been dead for 16 years in 1756, and the method used to build this fiddle would have been alien to anyone with that surname.

It’s very skillfully carved, but I think it’s a tough sell for most people. There’s also some distracting edge damage on the lower treble bout that is hard to ignore.

I don't think that the Pollastri copy in the sale would fool anyone, but you'd have to talk to someone very knowledgable to know whether the forgery grade stuff is that tricky. I'd imagine his Gaetano Gadda copies could be pretty accurate.

Mario Gadda was a very talented builder, but doesn't seem to have troubled himself too much where ethics were concerned. He made copies as well as forgeries, some of which he then certified as genuine. The cherry on top is that he also essentially forged his own brand, selling factory/workshop fiddles as genuine Mario Gaddas. So there are straight Mario Gaddas, MG violins in the style of other builders (Gaetano Gadda, Pollastri, etc.) that make it clear that they are his work, copies of those makers by MG that were intended to deceive, workshop instruments that were presented as his work, and every other imaginable permutation that could have been sold out of his shop, as well as things that had absolutely nothing to do with him, but had fake labels stuck in them by someone else. He's been dead for around 12 years, and there is still a seemingly endless stream of Gadda product showing up, apparently coming from his family. It seems to me as though the situation can't help but be problematic.

Sounds like the luthier equivalent of a musican't.

Isn't this statement redundant?

Fortunately, I'm in my 40s, so I have some time to work on disposing of my pile. My practice has always been to move material when I have an offer that I can't refuse, as opposed to dumping - I've generally been very happy with the results. I'm not sure I agree that violins are a perfect collectible, in that unlike factory-made things like Teles, many aren't quite so easy to definitively identify. There are numerous stories of dealers and collectors not agreeing on the identity of a particular fiddle, which has never been an issue when I've sold guitars (I could list many specific examples from my own experience here). That being said, I have more fun in the violin space for this very reason - you can probably learn everything you'd need to know about 20th century US guitars in a couple of years of close study, but would have to devote a lifetime to violins, and you'd never be able to learn enough.

I'm a fan of the concept of "collecting rationale" - the idea that in order for something to be a collection (as opposed to an accumulation) there must be some kind of defined logic to the set of items that is being put together. A deliberate group, so to speak. That's not to say that everything should be of one narrow type (as much as I love vintage Telecasters).

I've actually known a crazy cat lady or two who only had one...

A collector has different goals than a player, and winds up with more of whatever it is that they collect than anyone could possibly justify. I topped out at 120 guitars, and given my collecting rationale could add more, but after putting 2/3rds into storage, had to ask myself what the point was.

I've spent a fair amount of time trying to figure out whether Gadda's chicanery will help him or hurt him in the long run - after all, we know that Lott and the Vollers ultimately came out on top.

I'm sure that I'll regret posting this, but a quick google search turns up both instruments. A cursory examination of the way that they're described tells me that the person listing them doesn't believe that they are what they say they are, but doesn't want to come out and say that directly. That wouldn't fill me with confidence.

The only LN that jumps to mind for me is Leopold Noiriel, although I've only seen pictures of his basses. The one that I saw good pictures of was finished a rather uneven dark brown over yellow, which isn't entirely inconsistent with this, but I'd expect most people would hope to see something a bit more Pressenda-like from him.