1890s Guadagnini-labeled German-made 4/4 Violin

This has a Guadagnini label in the f-hole but, to my eyes, it's probably a late-1800s, German-made, factory fiddle. It has all the "stuff" they do -- ungrafted neck, ebonized-maple tailpiece and fingerboard, weird multi-layer fingerboard, mildly-crude carving, and (when it arrived) a definite demeanor of "down on its luck."

That said, post-repairs, this thing sounds pretty fantastic. It's a great, husky, old-time-style fiddle. Work included regluing sections of the fingerboard, minor plane/dress of the board, seam repairs and crack repairs to the top, a new chinrest (the tiny old vintage ones just don't cut it these days), soundpost adjustments, vintage geared tuners for the headstock, and setup-side work.

There's not much remarkable about it except for its wear and tear -- which is both genuine (especially the rosin deposits all over the top) but also faked -- because many factory fiddles made at the time had faux-aging in place when they were made.

As far as the tuners go? This headstock had some fine cracks and old damage repair around the pegholes. I had this set of 1910-ish geared fiddle pegs hanging around my parts-bins. It seemed a great way to both give the owner some tuning stability and also not have the headstock broken to bits when trying to friction-set normal wood pegs. Plus they look cool and work great and mean fine tuners are irrelevant. What's not to like?