I have used them for years: nails on carbon. Loud, bright, clean and stable. SciFi lute, a 20th century invention for convenience. Nothing to do with the sound a lute was made for. Don't let your modern ears fool you, a lute is not a thin guitar. Carbon sound has nothing to do with anything even remotely connected to an 'authentic' sound. An abberation. I have changed to fingers on gut. My duet partner on the Terzi cd still uses nails on carbon. If you insist on carbon, go for a very high tension first course, that will avoid the overly thin feel as well as sound. I have used nr. 6 (0.41) for the first course on a 59cm lute. That's 50N! I have a 59cm stuiterluitje for teaching, up and down between 415 and 440 and even to d-minor within one lesson) that's stil on carbon, and there I've changed to 0.33 on the first course. That's a decent 33N but a very thin and scrapy tone. Not good; I feel ashamed when I bring that to my lessons. Because the strings are so thin, you might experience setup problems on the nut: carbon strings can be too thin for the grooves. To get more grip you can try roughing them up with _very_ fine grained sand paper, like nail polish paper. Twist them first (hand drill, up to 200 times). I'm not sure the thin strings will survive this treatment without getting false. The thicker ones should be ok, as carbon strings are like those C-10 planes: even with loosing a wing they still won't crash. The hand drill is also a good trick to get a slightly heavier gauge that's not available. Then you have to twist them and secure them, so twist with the string attached to the nut and guided through te peg.
Better: change to gut and start playing lute. David **************************** David van Ooijen [EMAIL PROTECTED] www.davidvanooijen.nl **************************** ----- Original Message ----- From: "Bruno Correia" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "LuteNet list" <[email protected]> Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2007 3:48 AM Subject: [LUTE] Carbon strings > Does anybody in the list use carbon strings? I changed my nylgut set for > carbon but I'm experiencing some troubles with the second course. > Sometimes > when I play, both strings get too close on the fingerboard, resulting in > a > bad tone. The first and second courses are very thin, 0.37 and > 0.41respectively, my lute has 59 cm of string lenght. Is it OK for the > first > course to be a little over 4 kg? Is there anything to help to get a better > grip on the string since carbon has a very smooth surface? > > Regards. > > -- > > To get on or off this list see list information at > http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
