On 30 August 2011 10:27, andy butler <akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote: > Beginner's questions. > > Is the superiority of gut down to the shorter sustain time > that someone mentioned earlier? > > Is string damping really unpopular? (unnecessary?)
No such thing as a beginner's question. Superiority is not a word I would use for gut, as gut strings are imprefect in many ways. Another level, their imperfectiong makes me like the sound better, they're more insteresting than bland and boring synthetics (and there's the whole argument of why bother to play an 'early' instrument when using 'modern' strings to produce the sound, but I'll happily leave that to another discussion). Shorter sustain in extended basses is a happy side effect of gut, making damping of said basses unneccecary. I feel we can get an idea of the expected sustain from the music, and to my feeling a shorter sustain than metal-wound basses is called for in especially Baroque lute music. A 'gut' feeling, if you like. ;-) David -- ******************************* David van Ooijen davidvanooi...@gmail.com www.davidvanooijen.nl ******************************* To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
