It's been enjoyable for me to sit back and watch this discussion develop along its predictable yet excellent path- and I especially love Martin's description of the "grim determination of guitarists to use a capo at the 3rd fret" -come Hell or high water, no matter what, because a Renaissance solo lute is a G instrument, God Damn it! (It's OK, I was one of those guitarists myself very many years ago)
I've always suspected from the rough proportions of the instruments to the players holding them in the historic iconographical record that a majority of solo R lutes looked, in fact, to be in the 65cm to 68 cm range. For a number of years, my favorite solo lute was a small bass, which I referred to as a "division bass" lute (from the gambist's terminology differentiating the large consort bass from the smaller, but same pitched, division bass viol for solos) which I pitched at either E or Eb - ended up being "E" with A=420. This critter had a SL of 72 cm. and I could play virtually everything on it- the acid test being the full Ab chord (on a G lute, ha ha) that requires a full barre on the first fret with a c at the 5th fret with the little finger. Eventually I gave up the instrument; one gets weaker & stiffer with age, and not everything sounded well at that pitch- to my ears. I very much enjoy 64 to 64 cm. range now for pitch level and fingering comfort. Robert Lundberg was not necessarily mistaken; terminology is a minefield, and in fact the Germans referred to the bass viol as a "tenor" the tenor as an "alto", etc. Don't know if they still do, however. Dan -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
