In my own limited experience with an 8 course, tuning the D down to a C (just one tone!) created the problem you cite. It took some time with a string calculator to find a string that would work at both pitches. (I used gimped gut with plain gut octave, btw.)
Leonard On 5/2/12 11:39 AM, "Joshua Burkholder" <burkholder.jos...@gmail.com> wrote: >Dear lute-listers, > >A question from a beginner: > >First to introduce myself, my name is Joshua and I've been playing the >lute for several months now; I have been on the list for a couple weeks >and am really enjoying following your discussions. I have a rental >7-course and I am now in the process of taking the plunge and buying a >lute of my own. After much reading, pondering and agonizing over the best >number of courses to start with, I've come to the conclusion that a >7-course best suits my needs. So onto to my question: > >I know that some people re-tune the 7th course from D to F as needed, but >on my rental lute this seems quite impossible. The diapason is stung to F >and if I drop it down to D it becomes far too wobbly and flabby. From >this I assume that if I were to restring it to D, which I'd prefer on the >whole, it would likewise be impossible to raise it to F. Currently the >lute is strung with Pyramid strings so the basses are metal wound. Is it >only possible to change from D to F on the same string if one uses gut >strings (Poulton remarks to this effect in her tutor that if it's strung >to be tuned at D "it will only be possible to raise it to F if gut >strings are used")? Otherwise I have to re-string? Or does someone use >some other stringing solution, besides just keeping it D and fingering >the third fret for F (or buying an 8-course lute...)? I've read enough >about stringing lutes to understand that it will be a while before I >understand anything about stringing lutes... > >Thank you for taking the time to help out a newcomer. > >Best wishes, > >Joshua > > > > > > > >To get on or off this list see list information at >http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
