Word: stradivari
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...fiddle, five-eighths of an inch longer than his Amati, was built by the only U.S.-born member of the 300-year-old European Guild of Violinmakers, a stocky, shy Philadelphian named William Moennig Jr. Moennig also does all the repairing on Efrem Zimbalist's Stradivari violin, Gregor Piatigorsky's Montagnana cello.* Moennig, 40, and his 62-year-old father live and work in a colonial house on Philadelphia's once swank Locust Street, now lined with doctors' offices. The Moennigs sit at benches side by side, poking quietly into ailing old masters with scrapers, knives...
...Stradivari costs in the neighborhood of $40,000. Bill Moennig, who charges from $750 to $1,000 for his, is slightly cynical about it. Says he: "Invariably the tone of an instrument is rapturously admired until the audience learns it was finished a week or a month before. Then they come out with the bright statement that they'd noticed a bit of newness in the tone...