[anshorei]

What a violin is supposed to look like and how that affects price is interesting. As a violinist with a particular interest in old music I think it's sad how little diversity there is in violins. There's really only a couple of models that all luthiers build and those models all look similar to the untrained eye. In medieval, renaissance and baroque periods there was a lot more variability.

Aside from some experimental luthiers everyone builds the same style of violin because there's an assumption that if you're deviating from that form (e.g. cornerless violins such as the Chanot model, or baroque style piecrust violins) you must be sacrificing sound quality. And if you decorate your violin, it must be that it didn't sound good enough and you need to make it look good instead to sell it (strangely, as you mentioned, artificially making the violin look older is exempt... probably because it makes them fit in with the uniformity of classical violin)

The best sounding violins I've had were all a bit ... crooked. The simple reason is that being slightly asymmetric really hurts the value of a violin, even if the sound is fine. As a hobby musician I don't really care and am not ashamed of having a violin that looks a little "off" when close up. If you're not playing professionally this, or buying from upcoming luthiers who still have to make a name for themselves are good ways to find good-value buys.

[kjkjadksj]

Violin world must have never had a les paul or leo fender. Guitars would be the same way if it weren’t for these two.