Dear Gut lovers, experimenters, and gut tolerators,
After Ed. Martin's remarks on the flexibility of Pistoys and Venice,
I had a short communication with Mimmo Peruffo on that subject; and
he says that Venice are a twist of two, rather than three, but that a
twist of two, in his experience, is more flexible than a twist of three.
I have no experience of twisting gut, but I have twisted electric
wires to make cables, and if this bears at all on the question, then
I did notice that a two twisted wires cable was more flexible than a
three twist one.
Of course, the directions of the winding, and the angle or tightness
to which they are wound can no doubt play a significant part.
Mimmo also says that it is not just the twisting that makes the
string flexible, but also the special baths he puts the strings through.
I can not comment personally on this, as I have not had two identical
diameter Pistoy and Venice to compare (both seem excellent strings to
me, if with slightly different sonic and physical characteristics);
but I thought it might be fair to add this to the discussion. In any
case, Venice is the only flexible string that can be used on most 4th
courses (down to 0,70). Pistoys usually can't go below 5th courses.
Mimmo also said that he was continuing his research into historic
strings, and that he hoped to able to show some new loaded bass
strings very soon at the Greenwich early music festival at November
2007. These loaded strings are of a completely new type. The previous
ones were just high twist varnished string. These are halfrectified
Venice loaded ones.
So they are pliable and less prone to be broken or with little
'hairs' on the surface.
You can see and hear an exeprimental type here : http://
www.aquilacorde.com/catalogo8.htm
They are difficult to make however, and may not be more common to see
than the previous ones. I know that some lutists, such as Paul Beier,
used to combine both Larson gimped and loaded strings on his 11c
Baroque lute (I think this can be heard on his Weiss CD), and
Lindberg, I believe use Aquila loaded on one of his dowland CDs
(possibly combined with Larson Pistoys, but I am not sure of that).
I believe they were generally used on open diapasons that were not
fretted. I do not know whether the new strings, will avoid this
problem, but I hope they will become available for our pleasure to
experiment with.
Regards
Anthony
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