Do you get more if you pay more?

[robcat2075]

As A:M fans we know that you don't have to pay a lot of money to get something of high quality, but musicians have resisted that notion for hundreds of years.

 

Stradivarius Violins Aren’t Better Than New Ones: Round Two

 

 

Paraphrasing Sam Zygmuntowicz , one of the world’s leading modern luthiers, if you know an instrument is from the Golden Period, you will assume any poor sounds are attributed to your playing, rather than quirks of the instrument, and you would apply all subtlety in trying to coax nuances of sound of the instrument. If is it new instrument, you may attribute any poor sound to the instrument, and be less willing to search for the subtleties.

 

A few edits and that would be like how i have seen otherwise intelligent people react to 3D software. If they are having trouble with Maya they presume it must be their own lack of skill and that there must some superior result waiting somehow, somewhere, if they just struggle with it enough. But if they had trouble with A:M they were sure it was all A:M's fault.

[Rodney]

Interesting study.

 

This is not unlike the early days of Japanese technology where there was much resistance to paying for cheaper yet superior products.

How could the product possibly be of a superior quality and yet be cheaper? It was a concept that didn't seem plausible and worse it is sure to meet strong resistance from those who support or sell the more expensive and marginally inferior or superior product.

 

Add to this our need to justify our choices in paying more for something of same or similar quality and this presents a problem.

If I paid twice... or three or four times... as much for a car as my neighbor did I will find some what to justify that.

The alternative is to own up and accept that I made a mistake or miscalculation or have a bias in my judgement.

 

There is a more powerful thing at work here and it may be as rudimentary as our need to be associated with a perceived success, person, product or to simply to feel as though we belong.

There is also the exclusivity of being one of very few who has access to a person, service, information or product.

Companies exploit this as they learn how we react to their product.

 

I am reminded of the 'crystal skulls' hoaxes where for many years people were in awe of these mysterious glass skulls and marveled at how primitive minds with limited technology could possibly create such totems (answer: they didn't).

The skillful and creative crafting of frameworks to prop up plausible authenticity and value captivated the minds of millions of gullible people looking for answers to non existing problems. (i.e. they believed a lie)

How did the forerunners to the Maya (no not that Maya!) create these amazing crystal skulls? What purpose did they serve? From who did they get their unearthly technology?

 

But let's return to the case of the Stradivarius.

Why can these demand such prices? Can scarcity alone really be behind this desire-to-pay-more phenomenon?

(And if you did pay $50 million for a Stradivarius who would you allow to play the instrument?)

 

I have a few theories and not all of them likely.

But as the simplest answer is often the more correct I assume some have simply drank their fill of the expensive koolaid offered and then to avoid looking utterly foolish when the dawn breaks must devote considerable time effort and and money justifying it. As in the case of prolonged support for the perception of superior quality and value for the Stradivarius this alone can art-i-ficially support a belief system for an extended period of time.

 

The real shame of course would be the damage that can be done to the truth of the real value found in the quality and craftsmanship behind the Stradivarius.

Assuming it was that skill of the craftsmen that created the value in the first place one could assume this underlying value can and should be better understood, preserved and transferred.

But then, if it weren't so uniquely superior that would surely compromise it's value.

 

 

 

This commentary brought to you by the word artificial:

art-official; the skillful fabrication of erecting facades and crafting stories that become acceptable, officially supported and entrenched over time; a counterfeit; something put in the place of a true original; a lie.

[robcat2075]

Paraphrasing Sam Zygmuntowicz...

 

Or is it possible this is just a Superman villain trying to fool us...

[largento]

Scarcity does usually equal value.

 

If gold grew on trees, it would not be the basis of our currency. Same with diamonds.

 

In ancient Egypt, gold was plentiful, but silver was extremely scarce. Therefore, silver was worth far more than gold to them.

 

You do have to assume it has some value to begin with, but most of us probably have toasters that work great, but they are easy to manufacture, so their value is small.

 

Ol' Straty clearly made a good product in a time when it wasn't so easy to do that. People can't tell a difference in the 20th and 21st Centuries, but we can only assume that wasn't the case in the 17th and 18th Centuries. All manufacturing today benefits (as it should) from the improvements of the past. We reward innovation with patents and we allow those patents to expire to push the technology further. It's no surprise that Straty's later instruments are worth far more than his earlier ones. He got better at it.

[Rodney]

Well said Mark!

[robcat2075]

There must be something about them that people keep returning to them as the thing they want to equal or exceed.

 

But consider this... there is no Stradivarius instrument in use today that is as Stradivarius built it. Almost all of them were modified in the 19th century with new parts to accommodate the desire for louder sound.

 

The only part of a Stradivarius violin that remains as made by Stradivarius is the "box" and some of those only have an original front or back! Whatever his intentions for the sound of the instrument when he made it, that is gone now, replaced by a goal that developed about 100 years after he died.

 

This is true of almost all the string instruments from that golden age, they've all had serious modifications made to them. Whatever they had going for them beforehand, someone decided that wasn't good enough and had to be fixed.

 

At least when you buy Maya, you know you're getting Maya and not half Maya and some part of Blender that someone snuck in there.