So the thread about student lutes and costs has got my brain working... and let me state right away that by profession I am a business man and not am musician.
Why does a lute cost as much as it does? Is it materials? Labor? A price premium for know-how? Are the Pakistani lutes cheap (in both the good and bad sense) because they are using poor materials, or is it because the craftspeople simple don't know how to make them better? Could an accomplished luthier go to Pakistan and work with them for a month and enable them to start producing truly good lutes at the same price? Or would this transformation take years of education and training? I wouldn't expect the Pakistani factory to produce master peices, but, as noted earlier, if someone can produce passable violins at $300, and lord knows there are plenty of cheap but OK guitars around, it escapes me why there are not cheap but OK lutes in the marketplace. On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 2:18 PM, marius david cruceru <[1][email protected]> wrote: Hello, Luther, My suggestion is to contact mister Lorinczi. He is living in Romania, in Tg. Mures. He made my lute, A VEnere, 8, a beautiful instrument, contact me to give you his email address to negociate the price. Would you like to have a REnnassaince Lute or a Baroque? Let me know if you are interested. best regards marius david cruceru romania [2][email protected] wrote: As Chris said, don't give up Luther. I found two very nice instruments on Wayne's list at good prices (I have an instrument on order from Dan Larson). But before I found those instruments, I did a lot of practicing on a guitar using lute technique as best I could from some investigation. Put on a light set of strings and give it a try. I didn't use a capo, but you could to shorten the string length and bring the pitch up g'. This would at least get you going in a lute direction until you find an affordable instrument. Ned -- To get on or off this list see list information at [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html -- References 1. mailto:[email protected] 2. mailto:[email protected] 3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
