Isn't the appeal of a strad much more "I am playing an instrument which was built in the 17th century, one that has been played by hundreds of years worth of masters, played for kings and queens, played almost exclusively by people who have dedicated their lives to the same thing I have dedicated my life to", and not "sure sounds better than the other ones!"?
If I could sit down at Da Vinci's desk, in his library...don't you think the importance of that would be the history behind it, and absolutely not that somehow the lighting in the library made reading better, or the sound of the birds outside made retaining information easier or some silliness like that?
Strads, like really anything else related to art, are about context.
In Man in the High Castle, Philip K Dick calls this historicity. A shopkeeper shows two necklaces, indistinguishable from each ither but one was worn by Sitting Bull and the other is a fake. One has historicity and the other is basically worthless. But the knowledge of the historicity is inspiring and makes it valuable. The power of human perspective.
I like the idea that if you took both necklaces and shuffled them around in a way that neither you nor the shopkeeper knew which was which and then gave them both back to him, you would have essentially robbed him without taking anything from him.
If I could sit down at Da Vinci's desk, in his library...don't you think the importance of that would be the history behind it, and absolutely not that somehow the lighting in the library made reading better, or the sound of the birds outside made retaining information easier or some silliness like that?
Strads, like really anything else related to art, are about context.