<HTML>Please expand upon what you think is old - fashioned. If you take the Emerson as the paradigm of the modern quartet (to follow fashionable thought) I find their performances wonderfully correct, but a bit cold. They come across very much that way in live performance to me, but it works very well for recordings. If a quartet is tuning properly when the third is in the cello, the cello adjusts to the root and fifth in the other instruments. "Bottom up" tuning is not always right. I don't think this has anything to do with old or new, just common tuning sense. By the way, the "oldest" group we studied with, the Amadeus Quartet, worked intonation to adjust root - fifth - third, but all so quickly (once well learned) as to be instantaeous, so as to be applicable in concert. In their prime, probably the most in tune group ever ( in my opinion!) Other "old" groups (Budapest, Italiano, Guarnerious) displayed eccentricities which affect ( and effect) intonation. Groups like the Cleveland went through phases, due to personnel.                                                       More late, I'm sure                                                       Mike</HTML>