Three13

Oops, 13. I was never a 13-year old girl, so I cannot possibly relate.

The Cerutis.

That's entirely fair - it could very well be a strad-killer; nobody here can possibly know without playing it. I suspect that most people here would agree that $8,000 is optimistic pricing, to put it politely. That being said, the happiness of a 12-year old is probably something you can't put a price on...

+1 - at that level, you can find some wonderful instruments.

Couldn’t some of this also have to do with the varnish curing?

I’d think the Flatley provenance would only harm its value. At least among reasonable people.

Confounding members of online fiddle forums?

I absolutely agree on all points - I know of at least one Lupot del Gesu that's got the same sort of grads that you'd see in one of his Strad models (his disapproval of dG's thick grads is made clear in "La Chélonomie"). I'd love to know what Sawicki did for grads, since he plainly had il Cannone in hand, and I'd be most interested in Lott and Nemessanyi, given their reputations. Jacob's Feilenreiter is probably an exception rather than the rule.

You clearly weren't asking that question in 2020.

Here's a CT scan of a Stainer back showing the pins (hopefully this is helpful):

Too true, but learning all this stuff is some of what makes life interesting.

In another thread, the topic of typical graduations on 19th century English violins was touched on, and rather than derail that thread anymore than it already has been, I though I would ask whether anyone here has had a chance to look at any of the better early del Gesu copies (Sawicki, Nemessanyi, Lott, Fendt, etc.) to see what the graduations were like, and whether any of them exhibit the kind of grads that you see in the Cannone, or if they all tend to be thinner. I've spent some time looking at the information in Luthier's Library and the few other places that show graduations, and have the impression that virtually none of the 19th century makers was approaching 6-mm on the back, but the sample size is too small, and I haven't been able to find anything on the more interesting copyists like Nemessanyi or Lott. Thanks!

Which British makers have you seen go whole hog on ample, Cannone-style graduations?

The old posh Posch gambit.

Apart from the Amati, Guarneri, and Deconet, who else used these? I have heard that they show up in post-1730ish Carlo Bergonzis (some say they were added, some say original) and possibly Camillo Camilli - are there any others?