Searching for the perfect instrument to start music lessons? Here’s your chance – if you can afford it.

A 311-year-old, rare Stradivarius violin, known as the Joachim-Ma, will go to auction Friday in New York with a guide price of $12 million to $18 million.

It could set the record for the most expensive musical instrument ever sold under the hammer if it tops the $15,875,800 paid for the “Lady Blunt” Stradivarius violin in London in 2011, according to the Guinness World Records.

The violin was made by legendary violin maker Antonio Stradivari of Cremona, Italy, in 1714, during his “Golden Period” of craftsmanship, according to Sotheby’s, which is running the auction.

This was an era when Stradivari was at the “very pinnacle of his creativity,” making instruments that artisans still try to replicate today, Sotheby’s Europe chairman Helena Newman said in a promotional video, describing his work as “a sort of holy grail.”

Florian Leonhard, a dealer, restorer and maker of fine violins who has sold more than 50 Stradivariuses and restored “a few hundred” in his four-decade career, described them as a kind of living fossil, where each one is unique. He said there are just 650 left in existence.

Stradivari “created something 300 years ago that we still look up to today,” Leonhard said in a phone interview Tuesday, adding the craft is unlike many other industries, where the focus is always on newer generations and technologies.

“Here we are looking back to the best phone 300 years ago. Even as … makers, we still worship what Stradivari has created then. That’s why it’s such an everlasting item.”

The Joachim-Ma violin’s provenance adds to the allure. It is named for two of its previous owners, who were both known as classical music legends in their own right, Joseph Joachim and Si-Hon Ma, Sotheby’s said.

Joachim, a Hungarian violinist, was a key collaborator of Johannes Brahms, and “almost certainly performed on this very instrument during the 1879 premiere of Brahms’ Violin Concerto in D Major, Op. 77, with the composer himself conducting,” Sotheby’s said. Joachim traded the violin in 1885, and it changed hands several times before making its way to Massachusetts in 1923, according to Sotheby’s records of provenance.

“Some people would get goose pimples if they imagined … that you have an instrument that was already played by a great player that everybody now knows,” Leonhard said.

Ma, another violinist, bought the instrument in 1967 and performed on it until his death in the United States in 2009. It was gifted to the New England Conservatory as part of his estate in 2016.

Charlie Siem, a virtuoso violinist who has played on the instrument, said the violin has the qualities Stradivarius violins are famous for: “This brilliant, this silvery quality that allows you to express moments in the music, an intimate, almost vulnerability that is magical really.”

“There is an aura, a sort of mystery surrounding these great instruments made by Stradivarius. It’s intoxicating,” he said in a video released by the auction house.

The proceeds will be used to fund music scholarships at the New England Conservatory of Music, Sotheby’s said.

“This sale will be transformational for our students,” Andrea Kalyn, the conservatory’s president, said in a statement.