Dear Martyn and Daniel and all
I think there may have been a lot of background noise during
your conversation with Mimmo, and I think I have understood roughly
the cause of the confusion.
In fact, what Mimmo must have said was that one family of gut string
makers was providing all these strong strings for Universale, La
Folia, and Baroco, and that is the Toro Brothers (The Toro family are
from the city of Salle, province of Pescara in the region of Abruzzo,
Italy).
This has nothing to at all to do with the strong strings made by
Mimmo himself..
When Mimmo mentioned 'Toro", you may have understood the related word
"tauro" (bull), possibly the meaning of the name. You then perhaps
thought that Mimmo was referring to the material from which the
strings were made:
made from tauro, rather than by Toro.
The Toro brothers use indifferently beef and ram. (perhaps not
actually ram, possibly "mutton", but I am not sure about that. Ram
strings are brown simply because they do not use peroxides on it,
while they do use it on the beef gut.
Mimmo's strings are usually semi-rectified, but this may not be the
case with the Toro brother's strings.
Also Mimmo's strong strings are unvarnished, just oiled. This might
not be the case with the Toro either.
Perhaps Daniel can enlighten us on this last point, as he is using them.
Best wishes
Anthony
Le 25 nov. 08 à 09:36, Martyn Hodgson a écrit :
>
>
> I had a long conversation with Mimmo at last week's exhibition in
> London. One of the things we discussed was strong trebles: he
> said (if
> I understood him right) that ALL these higher tensile gut
> strings are
> made by the same Italian manufacturer who sells them to various
> retailers.
>
> Incidentally, an earlier email about Universale strings and
> responses
> is to be found in the archives. Ref below. Note that beef
> (bull?) gut
> is mentioned.
>
> Gut strings - 'Universale corde musicali'
>
> Friday, 24 August, 2007 4:10 PM
>
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