Fiddle Mystery Solved

A Stradivarius is far more than your average fiddle and that is what has had scientist perplexed for centuries.

It seems as though someone has finally unraveled the secret.

From Wired magazine...

In a recently published study, Dutch researchers ran five of the Stradivari violins, made in the early 18th century by Italian craftsman Antonio Stradivari (any relation to Rastafari?) and synonymous with harmonic perfection, through a CT scanner.

The resulting three-dimensional X-rays revealed that wood used in Stradivari's violins possessed an exceptionally uniform density, with little variation in growth rings added by trees each season.

Summertime growth typically outpaces wintertime growth, producing broad rings of relatively permeable wood that alternate with narrow, dense winter bands. That differential affects the wood's harmonic qualities.

Fortunately for Stradivari, he lived during the Little Ice Age: trees grew little more in summer than in winter. Hence the uniformly dense wood.

Then again, in 2006 someone else chalked the perfect sound up to chemicals in the varnish. Who knows.