Strad 2.0

As reported on the always interesting BBC, a team of engineers led by American radiologist Dr Steven Sirr, who also happens to be a keen violinist, have achieved the feat of creating a near-perfect copy of an ancient Stradivarius violin, from a series of thousands of CAT scans.

Dr Sirr had been scanning the structures of violins as a side interest to his work in medicine since 1988 and with a friend violin maker, John Waddle, finally borrowed the famous "Betts" Stradivarius from the US Library of Congress. The two men, working alongside another violin maker, Steve Rossow, completed the series of X-ray scans and then used the structural and density information to build several replicas meant to be as faithful as possible to the original thanks to a computer-controlled milling machine.

The resulting instruments are apparently very convincing, with the copies producing a sound very close to the original. This they hope, will give a chance to young musicians to have access to cheaper copies of the great instruments to further their professional careers as soloists. Next Dr Sirr intends to make a copy of a Stradivarius cello.