It's easier to look up by player. Go to Wikipedia, get a list of the instruments, look up the players over the last fifty years for the various instruments, and

It's easier to look up by player. Go to Wikipedia, get a list of the instruments, look up the players over the last fifty years for the various instruments, and look them up on YouTube. But anything you think you hear from making this comparison is fooling yourself. What you're hearing is the player. Heifitz famously got tired of people raving about the tone of the Stradivarius he played and played a concert on a student instrument.