I know what you mean about the low tuning,although when I recorded in it the playback was not as dark as I'd expected. I used to keep my Preston tuned to about a modern Bb, which it sort of gravitated toward on its own. My larger instrument, which is a seven-course, actually sounds very good a little higher.
What with single strings and a larger body, I'm not surprised that your Russian guitar doesn't sound much like a cittern. On 22 Oct 2006, at 22:59, Stuart Walsh wrote: > Doc Rossi wrote: >> I don't understand what's slipping - is the loop slipping on >> itself, or off of the hook you've made? If you're really using >> stell, as opposed to iron, why not use ball ends, if that's what >> works? Or you could tie balls onto the end of the iron strings >> easily enough. >> >> Another question - why not tune it to G, rather than A, to get a >> lighter tension? > Thanks. I think the string is slipping at the machine head and > perhaps the loop is slightly slowly unravelling too. After a couple > of hours now the string has settled and I can get it to a higher > pitch but it's still unsteady. The main thing is, the instrument > doesn't sound any more like a cittern than it did with nylon > strings - so I'll give up on the NRI strings. > > The idea was to tune it to G and capo to A. Compared to the C- > tuning, G-tuning, although it's the same thing lower, seems a lot > gloomier (whatever the actual pitch was in those days). I think the > A-tuning is sort of midway :- not as flippant as the C-tuning and > not as morbid as the G-tuning. > > > To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
