I was browsing through the fiddle for sale at Elderly and I noticed that many of them were descibed as Strad models, Amati models, Stainer copy, and so forth. What does that mean? When makes a fiddle a "Stradivarius"? Fiddles all look very similarly designed to me, besides the colours.

Related question: what exactly is a student violin? When I think "student" I think "inexpensive, with fine tuners on all strings" but I wonder if there's a more precise definition or a clear dividing line between a student violin and a concert one.

Thanks, Marion