Dear Howard, Please see remarks below.
Best regards, Marion Dr. Marion Ceruti wrote: > Actually, bending a line, cord, rope, or string around corners > produces a great deal of force in the form of friction, which always > opposes motion. It is friction that keeps our pegs from rotating > when set in a certain position (in theory). Indeed. The most noticeable effect of this is that when the pegbox is bent back, the strings will stay in place on the nut without deep grooves (and can be respaced at the nut with minimal alteration to the nut. ++Yes, I agree. This is caused by the increased tension on the nut. > If you increase the angle on the pegbox from zero > to 90, which is the maximum, you will increase the friction on the nut > according to the sine of the angle. This is why you will not see a > pegbox set at an angle greater than 90 degrees. The function may > be more complicated than a simple sine function, but this is the main > effect. Perhaps, but there's a far simpler limit on the acuteness of the angle: there has to be room for the left hand. +++Yes, I thought of that aspect after I sent the email. Even if you were to have a box bent back further than 90 degrees to the point where it were situated almost parallel to the neck in the opposite direction, you could still reach around under it with your left hand to grab the neck but it would be annoying to have to play that way. In summary, there are multiple reasons for not going past 90 degrees. Howard Posmer To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
