Study challenges the assumption that an old Italian violin is necessarily better than a new American model.

It’s long been held as a self-evident truth that the sound of a Stradivari violin is capable of a tone quality unapproachable by a violin manufactured inside the last ten years. The latest study from French scientist Claudia Fritz has seriously challenged this assumption.

Fritz’s research began in 2010 where she conducted a double blind study that called upon twenty-one professional violinists to identify various violins as old or new by sound alone. The test discovered that it was virtually impossible to tell the difference between old and certain new violins.

After a great deal of critical feedback, Fitz and violin manufacturer Joseph Curtain began work on a new experiment that would again compare the sound qualities of old and new instruments. This new series of tests designed to compare different parameters of old and new instruments has become known as ‘The Paris Experiment’.

For the first test, ten renowned soloists were persuaded to become subjects and, after performing on and testing six new and six old violins, were asked to choose the violin that would best replace their own for a hypothetical concert...