Herb, I speak as one who has not yet played the "lute" I'm building (that notorious "flat back" that has been bandied about on this site). But I do speak with a knowledge of design of other stringed instruments. There is a non-intuitive anomolie, the mass of the string makes no difference as to the pitch it can be tuned to (and that is a lie on my part, it refers only to monofiliment strings, not to wound ones). Among the harps and psalteries I'm used to there are wired, gut and nylon. I haven't worked with gut yet, as my climate is as incongruous to gut at yours. But I have worked with both steel wire and bronze wire, as well as nylon.
There is a range of guages that one can use for a particular pitch (Middle C plus 2 is about 8 inches in gut, nylon or steel wire, it is about 4 inches in bronze). I realize that on the lute, like the guitar, you have to look at it backwards. Not a natural string length but one that will work on the open string and with the stopped string, but the theory and practice are the same. I haven't yet used strings specific to the lute, as my "lute" isn't strung yet - but you'll find that there is a range of strings that can be tuned to the open string pitch. The breadth of possibilities is narrower than one might think. I give an example, on the assumption that you don't want a wire strung lute (although that probably existed under a different name, that tendency for lutenists to put a new name on every instrument - harps and psalteries of the middle ages were wire strung, although I have to assume their ancestors were gut). The tensile strength and the mass per unit length are defining factors, and greatly to my surprise when I started designing harp type instruments I found that steel wire, nylon filiments and gut all had a similar constant when it came to those criteria. Only bronze makes a significant difference. But in deference (before you jump on me) to the lutenists, may I point out that we are speaking of the same thing. The open string tension (within that limited range) that gives the pitch and the tone - and there I believe we come to taste. There are strings made that say that they are "high tension" or "low tension", that is a small difference in the tensile strength/mass trade off, these may be made of a different grade or composition to increase the tensile strength without increasing mass. But it is in a small area of the range. I'll come back to this when I string the "lute" with the La Bella rectified strings provided, and then experiment a bit with my bulk harp strings. And if I may be presumptuous, the slapping and the pressure of the action is a matter of the height of the bridge and the frets, so you could look at the guage of the tied gut frets you are using. The tone is the choice (and the way you play). Best, Jon > Does anyone prefer the sound of low-tension strings? Or is it as simple > as: > > high tension = > more volume, better tone, less slapping, harder to play > > low tension = > less volume, worse tone, more slapping, easier to play > > > I'm from south Texas, where gut is not very practical, so I'm more > interested in carbon/nylon strings. > > > >
