I agree that gut strings are very pleasant to play on, but the biggest contribution to the sound of the instrument comes from the musician. A great lutenist can draw a much better quality of sound from a poor lute with nylon strings than a poor lutenist can from a very fine lute strung with gut. Ideally we want everyone to be a great lutenist, playing on gut strings - but I suspect that isn't going to happen any time soon. From: Roman Turovsky <r.turov...@verizon.net> To: Martyn Hodgson <hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk>; lute@cs.dartmouth.edu; andy butler <akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> Sent: Tuesday, 30 August 2011, 12:27 Subject: [LUTE] Re: long strings? There is a great likelihood that "our" gut is rather acoustically different from "their". Lets not forget to use the honest modifier "approximation of". RT ----- Original Message ----- From: "Martyn Hodgson" <[1]hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk> To: <[2]lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>; "andy butler" <[3]akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> Sent: Tuesday, August 30, 2011 7:01 AM Subject: [LUTE] Re: long strings? > > 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 <[4]akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> wrote: > > From: andy butler <[5]akbut...@tiscali.co.uk> > Subject: [LUTE] Re: long strings? > To: [6]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][7]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > -- > > References > > 1. [8]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > >
-- References 1. mailto:hodgsonmar...@yahoo.co.uk 2. mailto:lute@cs.dartmouth.edu 3. mailto:akbut...@tiscali.co.uk 4. mailto:akbut...@tiscali.co.uk 5. mailto:akbut...@tiscali.co.uk 6. mailto:lute@cs.dartmouth.edu 7. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html 8. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
