> My "flat-back" is 63.5 cm VL, and I tune it to G. But there is no > musical > string that will hold that at that length.
Another beautiful theory destroyed by ugly facts. We have two 65 cm ten course lutes (almost identical) and they are often kept at G (A440) with either nylon or nylgut trebles. I can't remember the last time one broke - years probably. The tensile strength of the materials is adequate; if you are breaking strings that easily you should check the nut and bridge to make sure that there is nothing rough that is nicking the string. > It is an anomalie > of materials that all strings of the same material have the same > breaking > pitch (given the VL) no matter the guage I wouldn't call it an anomaly. The breaking point occurs at a particular (material dependent) stress. Stress is force per area - the tension divided by the cross sectional area of the string. (Think of it like this: the thicker the string, the more molecular bonds you have to pull apart to break it, so greater total force required. The only thing that is characteristic of the material is the force require to pull *one* bond apart. This is roughly what the breaking stress measures.) It just turns out that when you juggle the equation describing a string to express pitch as a function of stress instead of pitch as a function of tension, the diameter of the string drops out of the equation. It could be worse - on a lute only the first string is near the breaking pitch. On a harp (because the string length varies) you can have many strings near the breaking pitch. ....Bob -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
