Yesterday I played a concert in a coffee house. My Nylgut strings on the 7 course are getting pretty old. A week ago I changed the top string to Nylgut .38 I had, which, though a bit thin, at least was true. I found a Kurchner 1mm gut that I cut in half, tied some other string to, and managed to put on for a 5th course about 5 days before. It sounded great at home, and was getting to hold more and more at a steady pitch, but at the concert, it sucked big time. I spent so much time tuning that one course! I could hear it going flat within one tune. I could only think, wow! some people have ALL gut! It was raining and the place was full of people with bright lights, pretty warm in fact. Perhaps it would have been better with different weather. The fact that I was thinking about the out of tune string much of the time distracted me from my job of really getting into the music. That is a serious trade off.
My hat is off to David van Ooijen and Ed Martin for making it work. I don't think I will be willing to try such a thing in public for a while. YMMV To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
