I have an 11 course lute where the 11^th course seems to be very sensitive and difficult to get in tune. It is gut. No, I do not want to use copper or silver wrapped strings.
So, my question is if there is a relationship between the sensitivity of the frequency (pitch) to the tension of the string which would indicate that the tension on my string is a bit low. I did a chart of this in Mathematica taking the partial derivative of the frequency as a function of tension equation (assuming all else being equal) and it seems that frequency changes as 1 over the square root of the tension. This implies that increasing the tension would make the string be less sensitive to changes if frequency due to change in tension - i.e. easier to tune. Does this make sense to anyone or is it just noise? I am looking to see if changing the string will have an effect on tunability and whether it indicates a low or high tension change would be good. Thanks for listening to the ramblings and any guidance you can provide. These are expensive strings (Gut) so just experimenting is a bit spendy. Regards David -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
