>" I wonder whether the D'Addario string was titanium T2 nylon with purple haze?"
"Purple Haze"? If that is a special Jimi Hendrix Classical guitar string, it seems like fusion gone totally amok. No, this D'Addario string is just rectified nylon, which gives the illusion of being more harmonically true; seeming to have less extraneous noise, or perhaps less of the feeling of musical "deadness" that I can't escape sensing from nylon strings, on even the best lutes. It is still essentially a cold sound, wrong color: "... tend to find them coldish sounding (bluish transistor-like), particularly when a lutenist uses them with warm loaded basses (reddish valve-like,)" -Perfect description of nylon vs. the 2nd course gut on my lute. But the brightness of the overall sound makes this tolerable- for now- to my ears. Sometimes one puts up with a marginally acceptable sound until cumulative annoyance makes them suddenly intolerable. I would like to get some of the new Nylgut before this event occurs. Dan > Dear Dan > I am glad this may be a help, but I see you have far more > experience of nylon strings than I have, so you may not come to quite > the same conclusions as I did. > > I wonder whether the Adario string was titanium T2 nylon with purple > haze? If so it might have something in common with Titanium Nylon > fishing line. It would be quite low density allowing a thicker string > for the same weight (as I mentionned, once before). However, I think > the T2 could seem quite reserved, if compared to the NNG; or the NNG > might be heard as quite bright when compared to Ti Nylon (which ever > you are used to, possibly). > > The NNG go down to 1.04, I think. > > The US distributor seems to be > [1]http://www.aquilausa.com/ > but I don't know whether they will have the new string. > > Best wishes from snow-sludgy Paris > Anthony > > > Daniel Winheld > Sun, 19 Dec 2010 09:12:34 -0800 >Thank you, Anthony- just the kind of report that you do so well, and >your results will spur me on to get some of the new nylguts (Shall we >just call them "NNG"?) - chanterelles for my new workhorse >Renaissance lute and as far down as possible on some of the others- >4th course & possibly 5th, if they go as thick as about 1.05 mm. >For the last month or so I have been using plain nylon on the R-lute >chanterelle, as even the most durable guts have all shredded their >way to Gut String Heaven- so the blending of that string with the >all-gut rest of the lute matters very much. The best nylon >chanterelle by far that I found was a .46 mm (.018") by D'Addario >that a student of mine found at a guitar store- but they have just >stopped making that size. I have been surprised at how different in >quality, feel, and other subtle factors that nylon strings from >different sources can be from each other. I > was coming to really like >the D'Addarios. >Anyone know who is dealing the new Nylguts in North America? >Thanks, >Dan -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html