Ronald Prentice

[Martin Sheridan]

Originally Posted by Arnold Schnitzer

Interesting that the Contrabass Shop states that Prentice used Sitka Spruce from Germany...

I'm not sure why but Arnold that reminds me of a story I read in one of the violin magazines back in the late 70s. It was about a shop in New York City and it's resident expert. Like all shops they received calls every week from people who wanted to have their Stradivaris authenticated. The expert had only one rule: they had to bring the violin to the shop, put it on a table and open the case for him to examine it...and...they could not ask questions.

A woman had traveled all the way from Arizona, the expert came out from his workroom, looked down at the violin and said, "no" and walked back out.

I thought that was a bit over the top but like every one in the business it seemed like I had from one to four people a week come in with Strads or Guarnneri's that grandfather had brought over from the old country. One fella came in the shop one day with the violin in a old suit case, looked around furtively and said, "is there someplace private we can talk?" I knew instantly that he had one of the thousands upon thousands of German violins with facimile labels.