Hi Herbert,
I have never heard of this problem on the 4th course with gut so I'll assume you use metal wound strings. I'll admit it's an assumption that could be false or you may be using a plastic of some sort. It would be helpful to know in any event. Using a string made up of coils that are harder than the nut material could well have printed those coils on the groove of the nut, especially if you have used a high tension or the nut is old or of soft material or it has sat a long time at tension. The nut we use for gut wasn't imagined to work this way with metal coils. The lute was designed with a bone/ivory/wood nut that is harder than the gut string. The gut spreads out to the smooth nut surface under tension and at no point does it "dig in" (I'm not sure a plastic string spreads like this but I doubt it). Using gut (and a little beeswax now and then) I have no trouble adjusting the pitch - assuming the strings and frets are true. Citterns, orpharions and bandoras that use metal strings have the lesser bend like the guitars you mention. It solves the bend/tension problem for the materials given. If you're inclined to use modern stringing and don't mind modern workarounds, you might consider a modern angle to accomodate it. Or maybe a steel nut ... and WD-40. It would be less colorful than 15 different loops of yarn though. Sean On Nov 11, 2014, at 12:46 AM, Herbert Ward wrote: The bent-back pegbox means that a lute has 7.5 times as much friction at the nut as a guitar, taking angles of 10 degrees for the guitar and 80 for the lute. For the strings attached to the farthest pegs (say, the fourth course) this friction causes trouble because the strings stick at the nut during tuning. Graphite lubrication never helped me much. Nor did tugging at the string, though it seems this should work when tuning downward. To fix the problem, I tied a loop of ordinary household twine around the string in the peg- box, and MOVED IT AS CLOSE AS POSSIBLE TO THE NUT. Now I adjust the peg, and then give a momentary tug on the loop. The tug pulls the string almost completely away from the nut, and thus equalizes the tension along the entire length of the string. In response, the pitch immediately and reliably reflects the slightest movement of the peg (in either direction), as with a harp. A side-benefit is that the peg stays pushed in longer, since the peg is turned so little. Of course, if you put loops on multiple strings, then you have a mass of loops from which it is difficult to find the one you need. I've ordered a skein of multi-colored knitting yarn to see whether color-coding will reduce this problem. To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
