1890s Seidel 4/4 Violin

Update: Apparently this was made by Christian Wilhelm Seidel and has a bit of market cache. Interesting! Here's a MaestroNet thread about this label and here's a different one for sale.

This is a customer's instrument that was in for some work which included a neck reglue, slight bridge shave/adjustment, and setup. It was in pretty good shape to begin with except for the loose neck. Both the bridge fitting and an old top crack repair were done professionally in the past.

I'm not entirely sure the label/stamp inside reads as "Leidel, Heidel, or Seidel," but as the make (Seidel) is right for the time and the label/stamp looks an awful lot like another I found while trolling around on the net... that is my guess. In any case it's a very high quality instrument with good tone, nice handling, and fantastic flamed maple and close-grained spruce used in the construction.

The owner has this strung up with Dominants including a wound E which gives this a very balanced tone overall.

The pegs were fit nicely but I did dope them up.

The brass chinrest is pretty cute and lightweight.

That maple is awfully pretty...

The chinrest adjusts with lever-action and friction which makes pulling it on and off really fast.

...and there's that confusing stamp.