Sorry I didn't make myself clear.
When thinking about English theorbo, I was thinking about the viability
of the lowest basses (at say 130cm). On a typical swan-neck lute, the
lowest course would be tuned to AA at a likely pitch of around a'=392
and be perhaps 99cm long, so this might be a better comparison. This
comparison suggests that the 130cm bass on the theorbo would be fine.
The other issue is whether the 7th course octave is too thin to be
viable (I can imagine a diameter of about .70mm for the low octave, but
that implies .35mm for the high octave). I've temporarily lost my
string calculator, but Martyn Hodgson's estimate of .34mm seems
reasonable. But .34mm is at least 20% thinner than the smallest
diameter that we think the Old Ones could have made (we could be wrong
about this, but even if such a string could be made it is hard to
imagine it being any use for anything, as Matthew says).
So it seems to me that Magnus' potential problem is how to string the
upper octaves of the 7th (and also probably 8th) course.
Martin
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