Andrew Rutherford wrote: > Hi cittern men, > > Thanks for all the guittar info. > I have just taken apart and put back together my Preston/Thompsons > guittar. The bars on the back were all totally unglued and rattling > around inside. > The barring on the top was quite interesting, I thought: two > diagonal bars feathering to a point under the middle of the bridge. > And no bars actually coming into contact with the bridge feet... > Now I've got to learn how to play it. > Is it possible to buy a set of strings for this instrument? Or can > anyone suggest specific sizes and materials? > > andy rutherford NRI (http://www.nrinstruments.demon.co.uk/EGStT.html) sell strings for the English guittar. They're expensive. Art Robb (http://www.art-robb.co.uk/) got me some strings from (I think) Bernd Kuerschner (http://www.kuerschner-saiten.de/english/start.htm). They're quite a lot cheaper.
It's a lightly strung instrument. You want to get strings from a specialist. Learning to play in the tuning doesn't take long. You can be playing simple tunes, I'd say, in a couple of hours. And there are lots of simple tunes for this instrument. Use the Bremner tunes from Rob's website. Some of the tutors seem to suggest that you play the lower three 'courses' with the thumb (which is fair enough) and then ALL the notes on the third 'course' with the first (right hand) finger, ALL the notes on the second 'course' with the second finger and ALL the notes on the top 'course' with the third finger! I suspect most people just use alternating fingers though. Some sources suggest you are supposed to put in lots of slurs and pull-offs, although they are not specifically indicated. You should play lightly without nails. Like a lute you sort of press on the double strings rather than give an almighty pluck like on a modern classical guitar. The guittar is a (fairly) simple instrument with mostly (fairly) simple music but getting the thing in tune and playing in tune is quite elusive. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
