You don't have to live in them tropics to have these troubles.
The same goes for New York City, known for extreme humidity swings.
Ben's axe may simply have unstable pegs, or structural issues.
RT
On 10/5/2012 5:09 AM, Edward Chrysogonus Yong wrote:
Dear fellow lutenutters,
I can think of a good reason for synthetics. I live in the tropics, Singapore,
to be precise, where the temperature is usually in the 70% - 85% range, and on
rainy days it goes up to 100%. gut trebles don't last more than a few days
here. 0.75 and larger seem to be ok though, and i have gut basses on my
archlute. Our temperature goes between the 16-24 deg air-conditioned indoors to
the 27-36 deg outdoors. I couldn't possibly play any sort of lute or early
guitars here if not for synthetics.
Regards,
Edward Chrysogonus Yong
[email protected]
On 5 Oct, 2012, at 4:18 PM, Benjamin Narvey <[email protected]> wrote:
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
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