Dear Jörg
Yes, I have a double stringed huge theorbo. It is a copy of Tieffenbrucker
RCM 26 in the Royal College of Music, London. I have it built a year ago
being inspired by Lynda Sayce's thought provoking articles on her homepage.
I wanted to hear how the originals might have sounded so 'sound
reconstruction' is what was on my mind. For this reason I asked my luthier
Friend, Tihamér Romanek, to follow the original's plan and Xray photo as
close as possible and use the same materials as far as possible, too. The
instrument is ~205 cm long, 93 cm mensure for the 6 courses and 170 cm for
the basses.
When only the body with the 'shorter' neck was ready, I experimented with
fretguts (cheeper material) for the tensions of the would be strings before
ordering them and interestingly found that relatively low tension strings
give so much better sound on this instrument. So now it is tuned in G with
Kürschner gut strings, the smallest gauge (3rd course A) being 042 mm and
the tension of the strings around 2.9-3 kg-s. Some extra benefit I found:
the tuning keeps very stabile at this tension (sometimes I don't even have
to retune most of the strings after many days of not playing <of course,
only when the instrument is kept in roughly the same humidity and
temperature>) and I didn't have to change but one string still after a year.
In my opinion, it has a very rich, colourful sound, though not as loud as a
single strung instrument with higher tension strings perhaps, but still it
cuts through the ensamble with its special timber I believe. (Never heard
myself from outside).
I don't have problems with strings rattling, though the 2 strings in the
courses, just as in the original, are quite close. Slurs and the like sound
also good sometimes - I mean when not, it's rather my own fault. It took
some time to find out how to hold such a huge thing comfortably, but by now
I have no back or arm pain any longer when I play it. Even the wide spacing
of the frets can be get accoustomed to in a few days time. (I only wish I
had more time to practice.)
All in all, I love this instrument though I might be biased of course.
All the best,
Gabor Domjan
----- Original Message -----
From: "Hilbert Jörg" <[email protected]>
To: "lute List" <[email protected]>
Sent: Wednesday, June 01, 2011 9:27 AM
Subject: [LUTE] Double stringed on a theorbo?
Dear collected wisdom,
as the old italian theorbos seemed to be quite huge and double stringed
(for 1-6), I am not aware of anyone to play such an instrument in my
neighborhood. I recently had the possibility to test an instrument of
about 90 cm, which was amazing but single stringed. Does anybody know such
a double stringed instrument? Does it really make sense for continuo? Are
there other experiences in terms of power, playability, slurs, comfort
etc.?
Thank you very much,
Jörg
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