Dear David and All: I would say a larger body is more important, because it takes a "critical mass" of top area to reproduce that bass note, sort of like a bass drum. That is one reason why many archlutes are deficient in the bass register, in my opinion. A luthier once showed me an archlute he was making (actually just the top) and I remarked on how wide it was relative to that of a tenor lute. He replied that that was the key to making it work in the bass. So it seems to me that the top either must be longer -- as on theorbos -- or wider, as this luthier advocated for his archlute -- for the bass register to be effective. Cheers, Jim
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