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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;smallaxe, post: 9770099, member: 13430&quot;]Most old Italian violins (Cremonese) such as Stradivarius were modernized in the early 1800&#039;s. The scrolls were cut off, and the neck was replaced, changing the length and angle. The original scroll was then spliced onto the new neck. There are very few old Italian violins that were left in their original baroque state, possibly because they were not being played much. Violinists wanted the modern proportions. Looking for the splice can tell you a some things, but not always definitively. If the violin has modern proportions, and there is no splice at the scroll, it&#039;s likely made after the baroque period. People making violins in the 1800&#039;s and 1900&#039;s knew about this, and often brand new violins were made with spliced scrolls so they would look like they had been old violins. If there is a splice, looking at the quality of the splice can tell you something. Splicing the scroll is not a simple thing, and it&#039;s unlikely someone would go through the effort to make a beautiful (and nearly invisible) splice on a cheap instrument. Sometimes a cheap instrument will look like it has a splice, but the splice lines are actually just scribed into the wood to make it look like a splice when there isn&#039;t actually a splice. That can indicate the instrument is an inexpensive trade violin. You can tell a scribed, fake splice from a real one by seeing if the grain of the wood continues through the splice or changes at the splice. Here are photos of a violin I have that has been spliced. This violin purports to be an 18th century Italian violin by Gennaro Gagliano. It&#039;s more likely a 19th or early 20th century English or French instrument, but could be German.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]481631[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]481634[/ATTACH][/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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