Advice please, I am trying to string my charango (36cm VL) as a mandola (Ronn's on his CD was 30cm). I'm quite capable of doing it, and in fact have it strung rather well from spare lute and harp strings. And as you all know by now I'm working on combining the empirics and theories of strings to justify many forumulae.
But this is a different question on a similar topic, What is the appropriate "musical" tension. The string calculator I use is the O.W. (long German name I can't remember, but is the one Aquila uses on their web site - I also have the Beier). This question is as to musical values at different tension with different VLs. The O.W. calculator suggests 35N for the first course on my 63+cm lute, but suggests 27N for the first course on the Charango. And I must say that empirically the strings on that short course istrument seem to be better at lower tension than the lute'. Any subjective or objective comments would be welcomed. Given that one is well within the limits of the string does the best musical tension drop as the VL drops? The O.W calculator indicates that in its recommendations, and my own experiments agree. My chaterelle sounds best at about 35 to 40 N, yet my 'chandora" seems to like about 25 27. Best,Jon To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
