This Thing Won't Play Second Fiddle. What Makes a Strad a Strad

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Loot recently found itself a houseguest alongside Nicholas Mann, chair of the string department at the Manhattan School of Music and co-founder of the Mendelssohn String Quartet.

Mann plays a Stradivarius, the Marquis de Villefranche, made in 1729.Listening to him practice , Loot recognized that the sound was fantastic. But what makes Stradivarius a synonym for amazing violin?