Sanz advises storing strings in a little pot in almond oil to keep them
supple....
se deven conservar en una cagilla, o canon de oja de lata, o sino en una
vadanilla con azeite de almendras dulces......y assi tendras las cuerdas
frescas.
Monica
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sam Chapman" <manchap...@gmail.com>
To: "alexander" <voka...@verizon.net>
Cc: "Mark Probert" <probe...@gmail.com>; "lute-cs. edu"
<lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Saturday, October 06, 2012 5:03 PM
Subject: [LUTE] Re: the point of synthetics - Rather the movement of the
whole lute
Interesting. Weren't strings sometimes also treated with certain oils -
almond oil I think? I hadn't realised that this could potentially
protect against humidity changes.
Sam
On 6 October 2012 15:05, alexander <[1]voka...@verizon.net> wrote:
It needs to be understood, i think, that there are clearly two
elements in the pitch (in)stability. The string material and design
is, of course one. But for the light and breathing, as it is, lute,
the movement of the whole structure, most likely influences the
tuning much, much more. So, in this case, chasing the string mole
while disregarding the body movement monster, is not going to solve
anything. Especially with the synthetics, - the differences observed
here are the result of a different stretch - flexibility of the
materials, rather then some radical reaction from the material to
the temperature - humidity change. (Of course the wound strings,
consisting of two conflicting materials are a problem of its' own).
Just one brief look at the size of a single string and comparing it
with the size of the whole instrument should make one to realize
something here, right?
I do not have an information on the early lutes in this regard, but
early - baroque - bowed instruments as well as some later violins,
especially those built and used in bad climes, had the inner wood
surfaces treated with the mixture of hide glue and linseed oil.
(There were actually some arguing this might have improved the
instrument sound - to some tastes, that is, just off the top of my
head - look up Frederick Castle's "Violin tone peculiarities"). Some
other varnishes on the inner wood surface were observed as well. I
have seen them on museum instruments. And some varnishes penetrated
the wood deeply enough to create more wood stability. Think Cremona
here.
Protecting the inner wood surface of the lute would do much more to
stabilize its' tuning in the case of rapid weather changes. But this
will never happen, i would hazard to guess. Chasing a perfect string
- there is the solution, of course.
alexander r.
On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 12:17:41 +1000
Mark Probert <[2]probe...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> My $0.02, living in Sydney Australia, is that nylgut mitigates
some
> of he effect of fairly extreme weather changes. We can have a
thunder
> storm roll in and have the temperature drop by 10+C in the space
of as
> many minutes. Gut just gives up in those circumstances.
>
> Part B of this is the effect of the weather on the wood of the
> instrument. One of my lutes is more stable than the other in the
> pegbox department. When we are in a changing time, I am forced
not to
> play this instrument for days at a time (I really don't enjoy the
tune,
> tune, tune aspect).
>
> Then, isn't there the old adage of lute players spending half
their
> time tuning and the other half playing out of tune? This is not a
new
> problem, though I do believe that synthetics help.
>
> Kind regards
>
> --
> mark.
>
>
>
> To get on or off this list see list information at
> [3]http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
--
Sam Chapman
Oetlingerstrasse 65
4057 Basel
(0041) 79 530 39 91
--
References
1. mailto:voka...@verizon.net
2. mailto:probe...@gmail.com
3. http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
