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NYT makes this vague, unsubstantiated claim "For hundreds of years, the best violin players have almost unanimously said they prefer a Stradivari or a Guarneri instrument," take it with a grain of salt or preferably evidence that mainstream media benefits by perpetuating mysterious illusions for the emotional allure.

This story is the epitome of fake news. This is the kind of content it is so hard to filter when anybody on the web can make a serious looking website and publish pure fiction as if it were news.

AI is nowhere near being able to classify these stories. Lots of election stories were similarly challenging. Even humans have to be pretty smart to pick them out sometimes.

>This story is the epitome of fake news

Is "fake news" going to be the new meme here? If you think this epitomizes "fake news", your detector needs recalibration.

I can't even imagine the amount of fear I'd feel if someone asked me to make some modifications to an antique violin worth millions of dollars. It'd be like deploying an update on a Friday afternoon.

The fear would be palpable, but on most of those instruments, the modifications were done in the 19th century, as the modern violin was developed. They changed the size and shape of the bass bar, and the geometry of the neck. Also, the materials and construction techniques all lend themselves to repairability.

Just holding one of those instruments would make me nervous, but in terms of both maintenance and use, they were made to be played. This is just something that people accept.

I obviously don't play a Strad (he didn't make double basses, that's my excuse), but when I got a nice new bass, people asked me if I'd ever take it out of the house, or if I'd use my old bass for performances. I tell people the same thing, it was made to be played.

Hah, I can't compare to that, but I do some minor violin-fixing stuff as a hobby. Recently I spent a decent amount of time repairing a 100 year old German violin, and (at first) it's exactly like you describe: you feel like you're going to destroy everything. Like you're playing football with a Prince Rupert's Drop. But then you get into a bit of a pattern with the instrument, and you start to feel more confident... which funny enough isn't a good thing, cause that's when you screw up.

Make no mistake, I love it though, and the finished product is absolutely gorgeous.

I've repaired a few violins, none of them expensive or valuable. One of them I had gotten at Goodwill for $20 or so with a couple cracks in the top.

Popping the top off of the violin was a little nerve-wracking, but that cracking-hide-glue sound is also satisfying. It went back together nicely (I even used the opportunity to glue a piezo-film transducer to the inside of the soundboard).

Now I don't feel quite so much like the violin I'm holding is going to shatter into a million pieces if I twist too hard on a tuning peg.

Now imagine leaving it on a train: http://www.thelocal.de/20160108/violinist-forgets-24-million...

At least a deploy you can fix or roll back. Break a Strad or Guarneri, and you're done.

Mmm, not necessarily. Someone took a fireplace poker to Bill Monroe's mandolin. Someone managed to put it back together: http://www.mandolinarchive.com/perl/show_mando.pl?55 (The last picture shows the damage, first one shows its restored state.)

Yes, necessarily, we're talking about the financial value of a Strad. I'm well aware of how fixable wooden instruments are, but break a Strad, and you lose millions. Irrevocably.

Good to see another bluegrass fan on HN! (I'm a mandolin player myself, and I think our fascination with Loar F5s is similar to violinists' obsession with Strads)

It'd be like deploying an update before leaving for your honeymoon!

> Stradivarius was ahead of his time

Is this really true?

I was under the impression that the primary issue with the wood was that it came from a stand of trees that had been through an unusual number of drought years and made the wood unusually dense.

So, while the craftsmanship was excellent, it was a happy accident in the material that made it world-renowned. This is similar to how Damascus Steel was an accident of having vanadium in the raw inputs. And was not to be replicated once that raw material went away.

And, you can say what you will about Strads, but wood has a peak in stringed instruments that seems to be about 30-50 years in. After that, it's slow degradation. Strads are long past their peak.

I think you're misinterpreting the statement "For hundreds of years, the best violin players have almost unanimously said they prefer a Stradivari or a Guarneri instrument". While maybe they don't unanimously state it, that does seem to be the prevailing opinion over "hundreds of years". Just because there are violins that match a Stradivarius doesn't change that.

Please audiophiles don't kill me but it seems loosely similar to the debate over lossless FLAC files and a record. Though I will note that unlike the audio debate you're saying there's no perceptible difference between the two.

Audiophiles have moved beyond that stage. Today they are debating the difference between FLAC files and WAV files, and "audiophile-grade" audio players fully decode the FLAC file in memory before playing it, into a single continuous memory region (obviously, continuous in user-space, in kernel space it can still be "fragmented", but this is too subtle for current day)

I hope you are joking.

I suspect he isn't. Have yourself a giggle at these guys discussing the finer points of FLAC vs Wav sound quality (to be fair, some of them do make sensible points about the ability to tag files and whathaveyou, but still...)

http://forums.naimaudio.com/topic/flac-vs-wav-audio-quality

The only possible way there's a difference is if the CPU used to decode a FLAC file changes the noise emitted by the computer or puts noise on the DAC's power supply that affects its clock stability or raises the noise floor.

According to the link you provided, the bass bars were replaced with bigger bass bars to handle the tension of modern strings. So, it wasn't as if they didn't have bass bars to begin with (which is sort of implied by your wording).

For what it's worth, replacing the bass bar or braces periodically could be considered part of the expected maintenance of some arch-top instruments. When or how often it's needed is debatable, but instrument tops will sag over time due to pressure.

But isn't it true that "the best violin players have almost unanimously said they prefer a Stradivari or a Guarneri"? It seems that's what they say, even if they may not actually be able to tell the difference.