He does make the point, however, that its only for beginners.

If it's good enough for Jordi Savall, it's good enough for me, though Savall is a dedicated gamba player, even on his medieval vielles, which doesn't tie in so good with the iconography. I'm happy fiddling over the elbow, but the vielle was played up high - often way up on the shoulder. Seriously, I reckon frets died out as the differentiations between guitar and vielle became more obvious: higher bridge, greater curve, increased neck angle, and the fact that high playing is more a matter of feel than sight. Those vielles you see fretted (such as the York postcard) I reckon were plucked as well; the more violin-like the vielle gets, the harder it is to play it plucked with any degree of dynamic.

I'm currently in a bit of a dilema because the violin doesn't readily lend itself to my pluralist approach to fiddle playing (all four of my fiddles require radically different playing positions) but it remains essential to the scheme of things in it's fretted form. What is a boy to do? Easy - live by the idiosyncratic rule until such a time as one may afford one of THESE.