Damn, I would have put money on a scenario involving a furious Papazian
owner losing a $5,000 sale to a buyer that your article would have
warned off. (Those things will take your left hand off at the wrist
faster than a Pirhana in the bathtub if you attempt a barre chord. I
speak from personal experience.)
13 course spacing at the bridge? My own Robert Lundberg original is
exactly 150, on the nose. Works perfectly for me. One of my Baroque lute
students (Burkholtzer copy) has about 155, feels like "A Bridge too Far"
to me, playing 12th & 13 w/thumb, & top 3 courses w/ima- but preferable
to too narrow. My other Baroque lute student also has a Burkholtzer copy
by the same builder has a much narrower spacing, (his exact specs to the
builder) too narrow for me and everyone else who has ever tried it
(including Nigel North) but he is perfectly comfortable, never misses a
note because of the spacing. Has large hands, too.
On spacing, general guidelines yes, kind of, but a very personal thing,
so YMMV. The string spacing at the bridge on the original Chambure
Vihuela is apparently much too narrow for virtually anyone; both
Barber-Harris & Dan Larson only offer it as a cautionary option.
Dan
On 10/15/2014 12:51 PM, howard posner wrote:
On Oct 15, 2014, at 12:39 PM, r.turov...@gmail.com wrote:
Actually the brouhaha was mainly about the bridge width, even before I could
get to the distorted swanneck curve..
Previous discussions indicate that there’s a lot of disagreement with your view
of bridge spacing; you might want to make it clear that there are players who
have different views.
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