At 09:41 PM 1/26/2005 +0000, Mathias Rösel wrote: >yes, indeed. In August I attended a recital with music by Weiss, played >on a 13c swan-neck with endlessly vibrating wound basses. Couldn't help >falling asleep (my way of resistance in hopeless situations of that >kind).
Having a swan neck & stringing it in wound basses is defeating the purpose. The reason for a swan neck is to add length to a bass string to give it more clarity (that is, a GUT bass string). When one adds the length & uses wound strings, it makes for LONG sustains, which are not very musical. Sort of like playing the piano with the sustain pedal on all the time. Some like this effect, but it is most unpleasant, in my opinion. >A week ago, I had a newly built swan-neck (after Martin Hoffmann) >in my hands that was strung with nylgut all over, i. e. down to the 13th >course. The maker was afraid it might *plopp* too much with the very >tone fading too soon. But I enjoyed it very much. It was strong and >clear and had an percussive element that considerably contributed to the >rhythmical structure of the music. -- >Cheers, Congratulations on the new lute. I encourage you to try gut basses, as they will be warmer and clearer in the sound. After those basses are on for a month or 2, the tuning issue is mostly resolved. Ed >Mathias Edward Martin 2817 East 2nd Street Duluth, Minnesota 55812 e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] voice: (218) 728-1202 To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
