About: Player preferences among new and old violins

"Player preferences among new and old violins" is a scholarly paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in January 2012. It describes a double-blind study in which researcher Claudia Fritz of the Pierre and Marie Curie University and violinmaker Joseph Curtin asked judges and participants at the 2010 International Violin Competition of Indianapolis to choose the violin they preferred from a pool of three modern violins, two Stradivariuses, and one Guarneri 'del Gesu'. Fritz and Curtin found that participants most frequently chose a new rather than old violin. This result—which contradicts widespread belief among violinists that the best 16th and 17th century Golden Age violins are superior to the best modern ones—attracted significant media attention.