The superiority of gut is chiefly that it was the material used by the Old Ones. If we have any pretensions to attempting to reproduce the sounds these early lutenist composers expected and their auditors heard, it is necessary to employ the same string materials.
MH --- On Tue, 30/8/11, andy butler <akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote: From: andy butler <akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> Subject: [LUTE] Re: long strings? To: lute@cs.dartmouth.edu Date: Tuesday, 30 August, 2011, 9:27 David van Ooijen wrote: > The basses are shortish, so a higher tuning would be better, actually. > If the instrument is tuned to g', gut diapassons are possible (if cost > is an issue use fret gut, it really is so much better than any of the > modern materials), otherwise carbon or metal-wounds seem to be the > best option. Beginner's questions. Is the superiority of gut down to the shorter sustain time that someone mentioned earlier? Is string damping really unpopular? (unnecessary?) andy To get on or off this list see list information at [1]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html