Hi Ed,
Happy New Year old friend, all the best to you and Colleen.
Nice to hear from you on this subject. I like Ed have played for many
years with gut, I have only been using nylgut in the las 4 years or so,
only because I now have so many lutes ( and I only have 8... don't know
how Jean-Marie Poirier manages with his 30 some lutes..), that I find
it a bit expensive to string them all in gut.. and my supplier fo 30
some years (SOFRACOB) which in my opinion was the best value for your
$, has gone out of business. I am tempted however to go with Gamut
for at least one of my lutes, and Ed if I recall you were supposed to
send me some gauge calculations for the diapasons on the little Colin
Everett archlute..
Bruno
2018-01-19 16:30 GMT-05:00 Edward Martin <[1]edvihuel...@gmail.com>:
Hello Leonard and others,
This is a topic of great interest to me, as I have played mostly gut
strings for 30 + years. There is nothing as beautiful as the sound
of a gut strung lute tuned well. Some have tried oils, resins, even
crazy glue with mixed effectiveness of making trebles last long.
Of the few who responded, what they did not say is what pitch and
string length they are using. In my experience that is the utmost
important factor.
If you want a g treble at a=440, you cannot exceed 59 cm in length.
If you do, you can only expect short strong life. It does not help
to use a smaller diameter treble, as lowering the tension does not
help either. If you want a baroque lute treble of f a = 415, if you
exceed 68 cm, you will experience failure and short string life. We
certainly can use any synthetic string, nylon, carbon, nylgut, etc.,
but the properties of gut are that we must stay in the formula or we
have treble string short life. Some argue that we "should" be able
to string gut trebles at higher pitches than what gut is capable of,
but experience has shown otherwise. Although we can get a synthetic
treble at g = 440 at let's say 63 cm, we cannot with gut and that
lute for instance should be at f, not g.
My 67 cm. 11-course baroque lute is at f 415 at 67.5 , and a usual
treble lasts me 3 months. Once, I had one that lasted 10 months with
heavy playing!! On my 70.5 cm baroque lute, it only lasts a day or
so unless I lower the pitch to e. Then if I do that, it lasts as
long as the other lute.
So, if you have a 63 cm lute and insist on a gut treble, the pitch
should be f, not g at 440. Staying within the upper limits is the
only way to use a gut treble. Some people record in gut in that
configuration, but they can stop and change trebles as they fail!
Another factor is what kind of gut. Gamut now has beef gut trebles
and they seem much stronger than sheep gut; some say beef is not
as sweet in sound, but I cannot tell the difference in appearance,
sound, playability, or texture. For me, beef is my personal choice.
Ed
Sent from my iPhone
> On Jan 19, 2018, at 11:45 AM, Leonard Williams
<[2]arc...@verizon.net> wrote:
>
> Has anyone come up with a technique to increase the life of gut
trebles? (besides switching to synthetics!) I get stray fibers
very shortly after installing oneâstill playable but the tone and
intonation suffer.
>
> Thanks!
> Leonard Williams
>
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
References
1. mailto:edvihuel...@gmail.com
2. mailto:arc...@verizon.net
3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
