On Fri, 01 Apr 2011 10:05:16 +0100 (BST) Martyn Hodgson <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Dear Alexander, > > What evidence do you have that early lutes (I presume you're referring > to 16th century instruments) were strung at a lower tension than > similar size later lutes? The top string was made from the same number of guts while the mensura increased. The instruments' pitch lowered not quite accordingly to the increase in length. This is what i was speaking about, not comparing the lutes of the same size. Not at all. The increased string length, even while the pitch drops correspondingly, increases the string mass, requiring more effort to move the string, more so closer to the bridge. The lower basses are of larger diameters, require more effort to be moved. > > And what evidence do you have that the tension of a guitar around 1800 > was 7 Newtons? May i quote Mimmo Peruffo? His research has to be good for something...: "The mystery is solved with the help of a number of documents of the time, in which we read that the first strings of the nineteenth-century guitar were identical to the first three strings of the contemporary violin " "It is known that the first string of the violin was made from three lamb guts, which produced a diameter of between 0.65 and 0.73 mm" Going to "Arto's String Calculator" (Thank you, again, Arto), entering e, string legth 650 mm (on the low side, some of the guitars i was fortuned to measure were up to 69 cm), string diameter 0.65mm and pitch a=415 ( choosing between 440 and 415, with a desired 435 Hz). Tension = 7.061 Kg To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
