[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>I'd be grateful to know yr evidence fr 'light' tension strings on the >>'English' guitar. In particular, have you measured actual strings which can >>be reasonably dated to the 18thC or you aware of anyone else doing so? I had >>previously, perhaps on insufficient evidence, thought the contrary: that >>stringing tension was relatively high compared to, say, the earlier cittern. >>Further, the instruments I'd inspected and handled (quite some years ago) all >>seemed fairly robust and well placed to withstand such higher tensions. > > > I admit I was being a bit speculative when I said that guittars have light > tension stringing - and no, I haven't actually measured surviving strings. > But what prompted me to say it , was digging out my guittar and having some > repairs done on it. I'd forgotten just how very light in weight and in > construction the instrument is. There are players here > (Doc and David and Rob and others?) who may comment. Are your guittars light > and rather fragile or definitely 'robust'? (If this isn't too subjective.) > My guittar is incredibly delicate but strong. The woods are little more than 1.5mm (anything extra is the maximum thickness caused by the toothed plane used to carve the back) and the braces are like knife-edges from split wood. It weighs hardly anything, but it is very solid and has not a single glue joint problem. > Also, in the past I've played around with wire strings from NRI - brass, iron > and steel. Maybe these modern wires are different from 18th C wires, but if they are similar then this too suggests very light tension. These wires are completely different from modern metal strings - much lighter and more fragile, especially brass. (On the other hand similar wires must have been used on older plectrum-played citterns and strummed on the chitarra battente. I'd have thought that one vigorous strum on these wires would have broken the lot!) The full story is on Ephraim Segerman's website. A German ironfounder discovered how to make high tensile steel wire around 1600. This permitted the theorboed orpharion and arch or theorboed citterns for just a few short years before he smelted his last billet and took the secret to the grave. End of the large orpharion and its bigger wire-strung contemporaries. But metallurgy was on the move and it looks as if by the late 17th c pretty good wires were available, until the rediscovery of modern iron and steel in the 18th c. 'Lighter' is an odd term. Brass is heavier than steel, and copper is heavier still. Iron wire responds to tension slightly better than steel, and many guitar strings use iron even today (they are the ones which stay bent or kinked if you kink them, and will reform to show a kink when you remove them from the instrument months later, if the string was kinked before fitting). Steel strings will 'spring' more (hitting you in the eye when fitting them) and will straighten out more when removed from a tuning post, and lose kinks over a period of time. There are loads of formulations for brass/bronze. The standard phosphor-bronze is mostly copper, not much tin/other white metal, and physically the heaviest, needing a narrow string wrap to get the same physical weight; 'vintage' bronze is 85copper/15other; and yellow or bell bronze is 80/20, the lightest weight by volume, and thus needing a lower tension for the same gauge on guitars. 'White bronze' is even more extreme. A good medium bronze, like 85/15, is ideal for wire-strung single courses. The whiter it gets, the more tension it can take without stretching or breaking, but the lighter the material is, so the less tension it actually needs to reach pitch. Steel and iron strings need less tension to tune to pitch than brass/bronze etc. It would be interesting to try the new titanium strings which should need hardly any tension at all! Not HIP though. Copper wire is OK on harpsichords which have low tension, relatively, for basses. I've tried it on guittar and it can not be used, it stretches and breaks. End of story. I may try again with a double loop to hold it and a firmly overwrapped lock. It might work well twisted with iron. It's the heaviest choice. Silver wire is not mentioned much here. Silver is a good material for cittern etc strings, and of course it can be alloyed. It's even heavier than copper, and when used a wrap for basses, allows a thinner and much purer bass with the same weight. For real 16th c citterns, gold made using the Philosopher's Stone is the ideal material :-) > > Do we know anything of the stringing tension of contemporary 18thC German > instruments (eg Waldzithers)? > > There has already been some discussion of waldzithers. I think they are not > contemporaneous with the guittar and they seem to be more like folk instruments. > Waldzithers (as seen now) are c1900 onwards and use 20th c mandolin wires for the most part. My Bohm is about twice the 'heft' of the Simpson guittar, and VERY robustly braced. I have some Cathedral mandolin strings of the same date (an entire packet of oiled, waxpapered G strings... and nowt else...). They are not low tension, whatever wire is used is quite robust by today's standards, maybe because it broke more easily. > I think it is fair to say that all the tutors, without exception, specify fingerstyle play. I only have copies of Bremner and Geminiani and both do so. Several of the pieces require the thumb to play an open bass string to add a simple harmony and just once or twice you have to FRET a bass string... serious stuff! I find that even the single lines suddenly acquire a thumb bass. It's very natural to do so and I sure that 18th c players would have added one or two bass notes per bar much of the time, once they had mastered the basics. DK To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
