>I concur, Dr Winheld. I would love to keep them all in gut but
reaching for the instrument I use least or most and finding another
broken or barely >limping along string compels me to fall into the
plastic alternative. The last major gut purchase nearly started divorce
proceedings.
>Sean
I'm with you there, Sean. In the old days it was unlikely that a
player would have more than one lute. Nowadays even amateurs like
myself have several ( - In my case it's eight lutes, a vihuela, three
guitars, a mandolin an two ukes, with two more lutes gestating at the
moment - and I STILL won't even have the full set). Keeping them in
plastic strings is expensive enough - I'd need to win the lottery to
even contemplate gut stringing for that lot. The real killer is that
gut makes most difference in the basses, where the strings are most
expensive. Mattheson's claim that it costs as much to keep a lute as
to keep a horse is hard to challenge, though maybe nowadays we might
substitute a car might for the horse.
Seriously, I wonder when somebody will come up with a synthetic Pistoy
or Catline that sounds not too different from the gut version? I
remember, back in the 80s, Eph Segermann made some high-twist plastic
strings ('Gutlon'?) that worked well - I still have a pair on the 4th
course of my 7c lute.
Just a thought.
Bill
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