Mimmo wrote on facebook that most if not all the string producers use now beef gut, because sheep gut is available only in limited amounts and would not be enough for a sustained production. Beside this he says that to use sheep gut doubles the production time. The use of sheep gut would result then in more expensive strings and there would be a severe shortage. He said also that even for beef it's not so simple to have gut from butcheries as one could think, because the gut needs to be pre-treated and some machinery and people that operate it is needed. So a butchery produces gut only if there is enough request to make it an economically bearable activity and there are very few of them around in the world that do it. The situation might reach a no return point if the request for gut drops to a very low level, because this might reduce the number of producers of raw gut. Consider that in many things gut has been replaced by nylon almost completely, tennis rackets for instance.
The big problem is for the gamba players. At least we have nylgut and other synthetic strings but what about gambas if gut strings will disappear? All the early music bow instrument range would be affected. Francesco > -----Original Message----- > From: lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu [mailto:lute-...@cs.dartmouth.edu] On > Behalf Of Taco Walstra > Sent: Wednesday, November 16, 2011 11:35 AM > To: R. Mattes > Cc: lute list > Subject: [LUTE] Re: Gut Strings > > On 11/16/2011 11:26 AM, R. Mattes wrote: > > Yes, I had exactly the same question. > Apart from this: is gut not used in many medical situations to string people > together after cutting by a surgeon for example, or is this perhaps done > these days with other materials (nylgut? ;-) ) Taco > > > On Wed, 16 Nov 2011 11:08:14 +0100, Luca Manassero wrote > >> Dear List, > >> as Mimmo explains in a video (unfortunately in Italian) on his > >> facebook page, the original beef gut regulation in EU was due to fear > >> of the so-called "mad cow" disease transmission. > > > > Excuse my ignorance, but since when are gut strings made out of beef > > gut? I always assumed that Aquilla's gut strings are made from sheep > > gut. > > > > > > Cheers, Ralf Mattes > > > > -- > > R. Mattes - > > Hochschule fuer Musik Freiburg > > r...@inm.mh-freiburg.de > > > > > > > > To get on or off this list see list information at > > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html > > > --
