Herbert, this is an astute statement worthy of a physicist which I assume you are (I am one as well). :-)
But there is at least a second dimension to take into account. In particular with baroque lutes, you got to deal with a more-or-less - for now I'd call it this a- hyperconical shape for the fretboard because the bridge is more or less straight and the nut is quite irregularly curved, straighter in the bass area and astonishingly curved for the treble. Also, bass strings need considerably more space than the trebles and our poor luthier needs to take care of all this. Choosing different fretgut will only change the action so-to--say linearly neglecting most of the more complex geometrical requirements. Also: > The action depends on where the _tops_ of the frets are, which is > controlled by the person who chooses the fret diameters. No, I do disagree, the action is controlled by the luthier's work PLUS the person's who chooses the fret diameters. If the former does pretty much of a botch job, you'll probably go nuts while fretting the axe. Physicist's cheers from cold Germany g To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
