I know of no evidence of stringing basses other than with gut (apart from plain metal for the cittern family) before the later 17th century references (eg Playford) to overwinding, thus Granata's (1659) basses would most likely have been of gut and, due to the relatively short string length, therefore at the higher octave. The dating of De Gallot's book/pieces is, I believe, c. 1650 - 1684 and thus also likely to be plain gut.
MH --- On Tue, 9/9/08, Rob MacKillop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > From: Rob MacKillop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Subject: Re: [VIHUELA] Re: arch-guitar > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Cc: "Vihuelalist" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > Date: Tuesday, 9 September, 2008, 7:14 PM > The basses would not necessarily have been gut, Martyn...but > you might be > right about the octaves. They would still work, musically, > as bass lines. > Can't see the point of it though. Maybe there was a > difference between > strings for the theorboed guitar shape and the archguitar > lute shape? > > Rob To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
