Player preferences among new and old violins

[Jesse Screed]

Is it true for plug ins too?

National Academy of Sciences, January 17, 2012, vol. 18, no.3

Abstract

Most violinists believe that instruments by Stradivari and Guarneri “del Gesu” are tonally superior to other violins—and to new violins in particular. Many mechanical and acoustical factors have been proposed to account for this superiority; however, the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated. Player's judgments about a Stradivari's sound may be biased by the violin's extraordinary monetary value and historical importance, but no studies designed to preclude such biasing factors have yet been published. We asked 21 experienced violinists to compare violins by Stradivari and Guarneri del Gesu with high-quality new instruments. The resulting preferences were based on the violinists’ individual experiences of playing the instruments under double-blind conditions in a room with relatively dry acoustics...

...In a recent wine-tasting experiment (15), subjects were given samples to taste while an MRI machine monitored brain activity. It was found that increasing the stated price of a wine increased the level of “flavor pleasantness” reported by subjects; it also increased activity in an area of the brain believed to encode for “experienced pleasantness.” Could a violinist's preference for a Stradivari violin—and, indeed, the pleasure he or she experiences in playing it—be in part attributable to an awareness of its multimillion-dollar price tag and historical importance, both of which may be signaled by its distinctive appearance?

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3271912/

Edited April 23, 2023 by Jesse Screed

[mettelus]

15 minutes ago, Jesse Screed said:

the fundamental premise of tonal superiority has not yet been properly investigated

The wood that was used by Stradivari was unique (from the Little Ice Age). This page has a quick summary of it, but there are other sources for this same topic as well.

[craigb]

There's just too much already!!! 😮

[Byron Dickens]

Expectation Bias is a thing.

[craigb]

2 hours ago, Byron Dickens said:

Expectation Bias is a thing.

I expected that response. 😁