I'd be grateful for information about historic string tension on the Neopolitan mamdolin, say, from late 18th through to mid 19th century. The mandolin related websites I've seem to focus on the 'modern' robust instrument developed in the late 19th/early 20th centuries (often arched top and seemingly designed for, what seems to me, to be very high string tensions - typically 8Kg to 11 Kg per string ie around 80Kg total!) Whilst the Neapolitan instrument developed in the later 18thC has a canted/bent top to withstand highish tensions I'm sceptical that such very high tensions were used on the earlier instrument and would be grateful for any advice/ pointers to sites etc since I've been unsuccessful in searching so far. Possibly not irrelevant is that the single strings of violins of the same string length are typically around 5/6Kg for the modern instrument and, of course, often less for the period instrument (though not for Tartini!) Tyler and Sparks important work mentions little about string sizes and tensions. Martyn
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