This groovy discussion causes me to ponder:
Should the string grooves at the nut be the full width of the string,
or should they be only as deep and wide as required to hold the string
in position - prevent it from sliding laterally?
Similarly how deep / wide should the grooves on a Viola da Gamba bridge
be?
What do the builders on the list have to say?
Many thanks,
Bob Purrenhage
On Thursday, November 28, 2019, 10:27:11 AM EST, Leonard Williams
<arc...@mail.cs.dartmouth.edu> wrote:
Something I had not thought of--width of groove. Depth should
not
be a problem; in fact, near the nut the upper surface of the octave
should be lower than the bass. BUT--I had not considered looseness
across the groove. I'll look into that.
Thanks for the tip!
Regards,
Leonard
-----Original Message-----
From: Anthony Hind <[1]agno3ph...@yahoo.com>
To: Leonard Williams <[2]arc...@verizon.net>; daillie
<[3]dail...@club-internet.fr>
Cc: lute <[4]lute@cs.dartmouth.edu>
Sent: Thu, Nov 28, 2019 3:32 am
Subject: Re : [LUTE] Re: Unison C string on 8c lutes
Could it perhaps be Leonard, that the grooves at your nut at 5C was
set up for your thicker unisson strings. Something similar happened
to
me on my 11C lute, when I replaced Venice twine unissons on F4 with
equivalent thinner loaded strings. I heard a definite rattle. I put
the
Venices back and the problem went away.
However later on my 3A unisson HT gut strings a similar rattle
appeared, I hadn't changed the diameter, but perhaps some wear had
slightly widened the groove or the neck moved a little. I could have
changed to slightly thicker strings, but a lute maker friend said he
could lightly fill and raise the nut's groove with dentist's dentine.
This did the trick, so this solution for changing to octaves could
possibly work for you.
On my 7C lute, on 5C, I have Venice twine unissons and like yourself,
I
have been thinking of moving to 1.00 Venice bass and 0.52HT octave,
but
I fear a similar problem will occur as the lute originally was set up
for the unisons so with a wider 1.00mm groove
Also, I imagine perhaps wrongly, that a 0,52 Ht gut string will last
a
lot less than a 1.00 Venice unisson.
Am I wrong about that?
Best wishes
Anthony
[1]Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
Le mercredi, novembre 27, 2019, 8:33 PM, Leonard Williams
<[5]arc...@mail.cs.dartmouth.edu> a à ©crit :
I, too have had issues with octaves on the 5th course of my 8
course lute. I tried it several years ago, using an octave half
the
diameter of the bass (all in gut). But, whereas the octave g on
6th
blended well with its bass, the octave c stood out, sounding
jangly,
almost as though I had a metal string on there. Perhaps it was
poor
(thumb-in in this case) technique? At any rate, I switched back to
unison.
I'm trying octaves again as a result of this discussion, same
stringing. One thing I paid careful attention to was the height of
the
octave: it stood a mere half millimeter above the bass at the
bridge,
but enough that I was striking the pair of strings unevenly, with
the
octave ringing out quite plainly. I adjusted the bridge knot, what
little I could, and the sound improved somewhat. Perhaps further
work
with RH technique will further improve the sound. Or--any other
suggestions??
Regards to all, and Happy (US) Thanksgiving!
Leonard Williams
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