Anthony: you have heard primarily from gut fans, so my 2 cents is that I have tried it on my baroque lute and was very dissatisfied with the results. I've had major tuning problems as well as "false" strings (perfectly in tune in unison but very out of tune on a fret). I am an amateur with limited practice time and life is too short to be messing with the strings. In listening to performances and recordings, I think there is also a danger when playing on gut to be so taken by the gut sound that less effort is placed in tone production and variation, leading to a rather monotonous tone.
I have kept gut on the 13th and 12th course fundamentals of my baroque lute because I like the "thunk" and quite frankly the gimped silver strings look very cool. For my instrument and climate (Cleveland Ohio), I find that nylgut gives an excellent result. I have not tried gut on my 8 course because I want the volume (I play very little Renn solo, but mostly accompany a singer or play duets). I do plan on having gut basses on my new archlute. DS On Friday, February 09, 2007, at 07:54AM, "Edward Martin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >This is not necessarily so. Many gut players and I can attest that we have >been in situations where gut is more stable than synthetics. In many >concerts, I have performed with my renaissance duet partner where I was in >gut, he was in synthetics, where he was tuning so frequently, could not get >it right, and I did not have to touch a peg. The new gut strings are so >much better than a few years ago. The processing changes, by some string >makers, have stabilized the pitch problem. > >ed > >At 11:13 AM 2/9/2007 +0100, Anthony Hind wrote: >>I have not heard Toyohiko' Weichenberger recording, so I can't judge >>about the "in tuneness" of his lute. Although gut is obviously prone >>to going out of tune more quickly than nylgut, in the stable >>environment of the recording studio this should not be an impossible >>problem. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
