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REGRADUATION, WHAT IS IT? |
| When instrument makers create violins, they "graduate" their instruments’ vibrating parts: the top, the back, etc. . Re-graduation is a way of secretly undoing all this. When violins are regraduated, parts like the top are, so to speak, carved out even much further. The instrument is gutted by "thinning" the wood, by reducing its original thickness from 20% to even 50%. Layers are planed off—-and, as is probably obvious, they’re not put back. It is an "irreversible" procedure. In terms of professional depreciation tables, the fair market value of your "fiddle" may have been reduced by as much as 75%. A $10,000 Dollar violin can turn into a $2,500 Dollar corpse. The effect is a lot like what you’d get from taking a knife or chisel to a prized wooden bowl. The original woodworker may have formed it lovingly, carefully on a lathe. But now the wall of the bowl has been punched through, and the integrity of your possession is gone. Its monetary value is next to nothing. Moreover, its shape has been altered--beyond recognition. Forever. |
| F.R., Jr. |