Absolutely. Even now use two copper powder loaded silk strings on treble gamba and one on eight course lute. All of them are made with mixture of agar-agar and sea salt. (I usually make a small number of strings, therefore using gelatin or hide glue at needed temperatures i would have to dispose of the mix every time. Agar stands repeated close to boil without loosing its' qualities.) I did try some historical techniques involving lye and salts, and such, and long periods of time, but they would be befitting to a full scale production more then anything else. As far as midrange strings with color, i did have a few experimental strings very much liked by gamba and lute players, which were painted with oil paint (linseed). They had amazingly good sound, but for the world of it, i did not know what to think of them. They certainly sound better then just linseed (+ other drying oils) cured ones, plus have a very smooth surface. I did arrive to such a need somehow, but can not claim that it could be an accepted practice in the past. alexander
On Tue, 24 Feb 2009 20:07:32 +0000 Alexander Batov <alexander.ba...@vihuelademano.com> wrote: > Well, FoRMHI is reborn now so hopefully the discussion will carry on. > What I wonder is how the idea of coloured strings (meaning loaded, in > the context of this discussion) resides with the fact that occasionally > they do show up among the mid-range strings too (not to say on the the > first and second courses, as in L'homme au Luth / /by Rubens!) where, > strictly speaking, there is no such 'necessity'? > > Did you actually try to load your silk strings? > > AB > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
