Hello all, I have recently joined this list and it is great. I am gearing up to build my first baroque guitar and am getting more and more excited by the day waiting for the plan (Ashmolean 1642 Rene Voboam). I have built instruments before so I am no stranger to working with wood (and a friend of mine is a luthier so I should be able to get some of my questions fielded).
Two questions, however, that seem to elude me concern frets and strings. Do I need to gauge my frets as I move up the neck? Or can I just use a fixed gauge of gut/nylon/etc? The other is a more performance oriented question. What stringing/tuning scheme would you suggest for a beginner? I seem go be most drawn to the Spanish music, but am a complete beginner on the guitar, and I'm also afraid the Spanish tuning will limit what I can play (I'd like to experiment with new/modern music as well). What tuning/stringing do you prefer and why? Any advice on building, fretting, tuning, and the playing of the baroque guitar would be most helpful. Thanks! Harlan To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
