Dear Luters, I know that much has been made about tuning issues pertaining to gut strings, but it strikes me now how little has been said about the same difficulty with synthetics/modern strings.
For the first time in ages I am playing on a modern-strung theorbo belonging to a student of mine for rehearsals of a "Fairy Queen" while I impatiently await the arrival of my new "double luth" in some weeks (more on this giraffe anon). I am simply aghast at how badly carbon strings go out of tune, even though they are "not supposed to". (Nylon/nylgut fares better.) Indeed, the (ugh) overwound Savarez "guitar" bass strings are the worst offenders of all, going madly out of tune sometimes: not surprising they are so sensitive given how metal is such a superb conducting material. The tuning got so sticky I actually took the instrument to a lutemaker since I thought it had to be peg slippage, but no. And of course, with all these different modern materials, the different string types are going out if tune differently. Superb. I just can't believe I forgot about how difficult tuning synthetics can be. But more importantly, it leads me to question what the point of playing on synthetics is: after all, the reason why players use them is since they are supposed to bally well stay in tune... and I am really not so sure given my current experience that they do this better than gut. Thoughts? Benjamin Sent from my iPhone To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
