Unless all the lutes were strung with similar strings, wouldn't this make a
the comparison a little bit like comparing lutes made from apple wood with
lutes made from orange wood?
And wouldn't string tension also affect the brightness or lack thereof?
It would seem to me (a complete lute newbie) that you could even make the
same lute sound quite different by changing the strings and/or tension.
Might be a good way to find the strings and tension that match the sound you
are looking for.
Too bad we can't set up a number of identical lutes with differents strings
and a number of identical strings on different lutes, all played by an
assortment of players.
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