Bill-
In fact, some of the string makers are well aware of the stiffness
factor; and have been trying to cope with it, and are coming up with
increasingly flexible bass (where of course it matters most) strings. I
have recently been able to go to an all gut "Pistoy" of Dan Larson for
the 8th course fundamental of my Renaissance lute. About 63 cm, nominal
G tenor, A=415, about 1.74 mm diameter string. Very flexible, no
problems at all tying it around on the bridge, unlike so many previous
attempts with gut or gut substitute strings of this thickness. And it
sounds fabulous. With a 9 or 10 course lute of the right size and of
this quality in string and instrument I would have no hesitation going
down to the low C fundamental. I believe Mimmo Peruffo has also been
trying to tame the elephant.
Dan
On 11/30/2012 10:30 AM, William Samson wrote:
Looking at all the discussion we've been having about gut strings - to
load, or not to load, to wind or not to wind, to twist or not to twist
. . . - one thing that hasn't come up for a while is how different
modern gut seems to be from the old stuff.
When you look at old pictures showing gut being used to string a lute,
or the loose ends of gut hanging from a pegbox, it's clear that it was
much softer stuff than the wire-like gut we have today. For a start it
came in hanks. Try tying modern gut in a hank and it would look like
crap when you unravel it - kinked, cracked, opaque . . . I have no
knowledge of the differences between the manufacturing process for
modern gut and that used long ago, but it must have been quite
different.
What difference would stiffness make? One possible difference is
inharmonicity - the tendency of harmonics to be sharper in stiffer
strings. This is something that piano tuners have to allow for
routinely - because of the stiff wire strings. That's just a guess,
though, and we won't know for sure until somebody makes old-style soft
gut and performs a comparison. I'd have thought this would be a fairly
straightforward thing for gut makers to do. Maybe somebody has already
done it?
Bill
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