Saving the sound of the Stradivarius


An interesting project is taking place in Cremona Italy. A link to a brief piece in the New York Times describes the effort to chronicle the sound of various Stradivarius instruments before they have lost their mojo.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/17/arts/music/stradivarius-sound-bank-recording-cremona.html?action=...

ghasley

Showing 3 responses by wolf_garcia

What makes anybody think these Strads are gonna loose their mojo? They're already hundreds of years old and, unlike vintage Les Pauls and Stratocasters, they get repaired if need be. I noticed a beautiful old Stratocaster in an add once that was more valuable because it was untouched from original, even though it didn't actually work. The only thing that seems to effect the tone of a Strad or any other fine wood acoustic instrument is not playing it...there's a Strad in Cremona at a museum that is played for 15 minutes of so every day for that exact reason, a fact I recently learned from Richard Hoover of Santa Cruz guitars. 
Thats simply nonsense...Strads get dragged all over the world and fixed if need be, and are very unlikely to be abused to the degree that they’ll ever become dust or too delicate to play...like I said, the ones in use get maintenance or they wouldn't be usable...Yo Yo's cello...lots and lots of playing time, no problemo.
Wood can be maintained to last forever, and nobody knows why Strads sound so good, with many theories out there...why does a 1939 Martin often sound so much better than new one? It will if it's played, and nobody knows what a Strad sounded like when new...likely pretty good, and later simply great.