On 19 December 2010 10:01, hera caius <[email protected]> wrote: > As I played theorbo really a lot this months, I started to wonder about .. > Can anyone give me some ideas what kind of strings I can try (with > sound closer to gut),
Sorry to be stating the obvious, but have you thought about ... gut? It tends to sound pretty close to ... well, gut, actually. A single strung theorbo is fairly stable in gut, so have no fears about tuning. And theorbo strings are not too thin, you were talking about higher string tensions, even, so have no fear of breaking strings either. For the diapassons get Dan Larson's Diapasson gut, these are really great. (Although I know some misers who use fret gut, and I must admit from occasional personal experience that it works pretty well ;-). For the top, anything will do: Kürschner, Aquila, Gamut, Torro, Universale, local butcher, whatever. Strings 5, 6 (and 7 if you have it on the fingerboard) might need some experimenting to find a sound you're happy with. A theorbo in all-gut is a mighty beast, projecting to the back of a church with ease. I had the opportunity to compare mine (all-gut, lowish tension, no-nails) with a friend's (carbon top, overspun basses, _much_ higher tension, nails) in a Maria Vespers shoot-out recently, and although from up-close he appeared louder, I won in the back of the church. Hands down. These were not equal instruments, and our techniques differ considerably, but still, the strings seemed to be an important factor in the result. But I hear there are strings with the actual colour (would you believe it!) of gut these days, so you might feel tempted. ;-) David -- ******************************* David van Ooijen [email protected] www.davidvanooijen.nl ******************************* To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
