In buying and using our lute strings we place an awful lot of faith in our micrometers. I see people changing strings for going up or down a tone or even a semitone. Yes, I think I can feel the tension change and hear it to some degree but we're often talking a difference of microns in string difference.
For example, a change of .42 to a .43 is 10 microns which is not repeatable on my smaller micrometers (even digital) but is on the 6" digital micrometer. For rougher measurements, say, between 1st, 2nd and 3rd courses, the delta is easily seen/felt and I think that even I could make a measurement device for that for further refinement. In the 16th century, of course, there were no micrometers although I'm sure there were fairly accurate (and perhaps, secret?) methods of fine measurement. I'm wondering how they worked out the diameters. Any place I could read up on this? Years ago, a friend did some experiments in roped bass strings and found that 5th and 6th courses could be made from combinations of the 1st, 2nd or 3rd courses. From this we concluded that nearly all sizes of 6c instruments could be strung with a total of 3 diameters of strings. The 4th course is a little iffy in that it could be made from a thicker 4th size or possibly a combination of 2 chanterelles. I'm just thinking that by keeping the choices fewer they were able to be more efficient in string technology. On the other hand, I wonder if this tended to keep the lute technology at a halt: ie, you can play anything you want as long as it has the 6 courses of those sizes. No, nothing was published and the theories are not ready for primetime but I was wondering what other string scientists have come up with. I realize there are the notes in Capirola but I'm thinking by mid-century there had to have been a larger industry at work, judging from the number of books being published and lute inventories. Sean To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
