Hi Stuart, First Q: are you using gut, Nylgut or nylon on the top?
Andy Hartig and I each use nylgut on our chanterelles and never seem to have a problem either at C or D (A-440) using Nylgut. His descant (Larry Brown) is 44cm and mine (Martin Haycock) is 40cm. I'll admit, his sounds a little bright at D but the strings last well enough. 2nd Q: What diameters have you been experimenting with? For what it's worth, I've rarely had any luck w/ Nylgut less than .40mm. Are you sure the string is working over the nut smoothly? Lubricant helps! Are you taking enough time to bring it up to pitch? For a top course, especially Nylgut, let it establish itself about a 4th down for an hour and then slowly bring it up. I always make sure there there is a little lube (I prefer beeswax; others, graphite) halfway between the nut and the 1st fret as it comes up. Nylgut has no pockets to contain it since it is non-porous. A non-porous nut material also doesn't offer any pockets so this, too, may increase its stickiness. In your floating bridge case you might try a little lube over the bridge, too. Also having the peg turn smoothly keeps the string from jerking tight too quickly. When adjusting (tuning or just plain bringing it up to pitch) ALWAYS loosen it a smidge first to break the fit. This isn't quite so critical for gut but should be matter of habit for problematic chanterelles of Nylgut. I also had many nightmares w/ my A lute till I found out where it was rubbing so (as I thought) insignificantly against the outside pegbox wall between the peg and nut. It also turns out it there was a lot of area just past the radius of the nut (pegside) where the tension kept the string pressed against the nut. After I filed down the nut 'after' the radius it helped a lot. Tension is problematic but friction is your sworn enemy! If you'd like to try it, I could mail you some beeswax. Also, if you'd like to take a few pictures I could troubleshoot with you more in depth. My 3 cents, Sean On Mar 10, 2007, at 12:43 PM, Stuart Walsh wrote: > I've asked for advice before but I'm really stuck now. > > I've got a small home-made instrument with a string length of 43 cms > (actually the instrument has a floating bridge). I need to have the top > string to c - equivalent to > the fifth fret of a lute on the top course of the lute.. > > The advice I got last time I asked was to use an ordinary lute string > (for an instrument with c.60cms string length) for the chanterelle. > But > this isn't working at all. I've tried several top-course lute strings. > They snap. It's obvious the string is just being stretched far too much > beyond 'a'. > > I may, of course have got confused about things and I may be doing > something wrong. > > So: anyone who has a small lute or a gittern. What diameter string do > you use for the top course? > > Stuart > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html >
