On Monday 07 August 2006 00:14, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > --- LGS-Europe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > You are destroying an > > essential element of the > > character of your wonderful instrument. Furthermore, > > you are denying > > yourself and your audience the chance to devellop a > > taste for what is an > > essential ingredient of a good lute sound: gut > > basses of theorbo, they are > > so great! > > Yes, but... There is only one thing we know for sure > about gut strings in the past: our gut is _not_ "their > gut." (i.e. the exact same type of string that was > made back in the day.) Therefore, whatever you decide > to use nowadays is "synthetic." Modern gut is just > one viable option among others. >
sorry, the "therefore" is mistaken. I agree that gut strings were different, and surely they were because all the machines for creating super equal strings were not available ofcourse. The sound however will still be more or less the same. Even when strings perhaps less equal in the past, the ear in those days was certainly not; people surely replaced more often a brand new string because it was not true. There is however a huge difference between the sound of a ugly synthetic string and a gut string historic or modern. The difference between the sound of gut strings in the past will certainly not be very much different from the ones these days. Yes, loaded gut strings sound different, so baroque lutes and 10 course lutes have sounded different than many gut strung lutes nowadays, but the difference is not of the same magnitude as a nylon strung lute vs. gut strung. I fully agree with David on the use of gut strings and it has become a horror to listen to professional lutenists playing on lutes with synthetic strings. For many the choice for playing with gut strings is often a financial matter which makes them to choose for synthetic strings, especially if you've more than one instrument. Still to string at least one of your lutes with (cheap) gut should not be a major problem for most people, I presume. Taco, member of the gutstring church To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
