On Mar 16, 2007, at 5:56 PM, Herbert Ward wrote: > I've heard that lutes, due to the thinness of the wood > in their soundboard, do not improve with age like > violins, and that, in fact, an old lute will have an > OK bass and treble, but be weak in the middle courses.
I'm sure that depends on a lot of things: how well the lute was made, the condition of the wood, how the lute is treated over the years etc. I imagine that the overall, long-term string tension that a lute is subjected to would play an important part in the lute's longevity. It seems to be a popularly-held view today that the "old ones" used (equal-tension?) stringing at a substantially lower tension than we use today. If we were to do that today, modern lutes would age better than if we maintained them at high tension all the time. Some modern makers build lutes to withstand higher string tensions, but it seems to me those lutes are going to be played harder and probably strung more heavily, and those things in turn will take their toll on the life of the lute. David Rastall [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.rastallmusic.com -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
