The Outsider

 It’s taken me over 2 years of testing various string configurations to settle on this and I wouldn’t even have tried fishing line if not for this blog.

As documented in the 5 posts leading to this, I tried, in order:

1.   The trustworthy Aquila Ambra 800 - not only do they differentiate between strings of the 1800s and 1900s, the Ambra 800 sounds magical, with a delicious penetrating sparkle, a sustain that seems to be prolonged by animated interplay between the harmonics from the different strings in a chord and a vibrato that not only responds to, but also encourages your creative shaping of it. Only Galli’s Titanio (which I use on a Kohno 30) comes close.

2.   Savarez became the 2nd experiment as I was still avoiding gut strings in early 2015. Not much of an impression, plus it’s a nightmare to browse their product and make a decision if you are doing this without expert advice.

3.   Having exhausted all non-gut options I ordered Kürschner gut strings from Schneider. Authentic, but expensive and they keep fraying even when I played without nails. The string can still sound good but the tone is terrible if you pluck at the frayed portions.

4.   Which brings us to fishing line trebles. I went through 3 different configurations in quick succession, first following my luthier’s recommendation (chunky almost modern sound), then to Makoto Tsuruta’s (Crane) B set (very floppy thin but enjoyable, almost lute-sounding, before settling on the gauges shown in the picture above.

Caveat: the fraying/shredding of Seaguar Ace 12 gauge as 1st string and the extremely stretchy Seaguar GrandMax FX 8 gauge (also as 1st string) may be a result not of the incorrect gauge but of the deliberately differentiated properties of the fluorocarbon lines themselves. Perhaps a GrandMax FX 12 gauge would have stretched and not frayed, or an Ace 8 gauge would have been just rigid enough? I don’t know. I might experiment further if finances allow.

50 posts!

Following a recommendation from luthier Jan Tulacek, I’ve installed Schlosser gut strings for the top 3. The 4th to 8th strings are D’Addario EJ27s - budget student strings. They’re straightforward and don’t compete for attention.

I can see the attraction of gut strings. They get to pitch quite quickly and when they’ve stretched a little they have an amazing soft flex to them, which seems to contribute to the sound. In fact, the strings seem to particularly enjoy echoing sympathetic resonances, giving a shine to chords.

One change before that was Aquila Ambra 800, equal-tensioned Nylgut strings following Carulli’s instructions and designed for the contemporary early guitarist for use on music from 1790 to 1880. These were oddly pleasing, revealing a nice ‘chunk’ to the lower midrange of the guitar once they’d settled in (after a day). The Nylgut-silverwound basses smoothened out a bit quickly, exhibiting a gamely zing to its growing tubbiness after 4 weeks.

The trebles that came with the guitar were apparently fluorocarbon fishing lines and they sounded great; very open and clear. Gauge recommendations from earlyromanticguitar.com’s string page.

I've been whistling Beethoven for days on end and it's due to this album. It led, inevitably, to a search for the sheet music which, these days, seems to always turn up imslp and delcamp (which itself serves to lead to the Danish Royal Library and the Rischel and Birket-Smith collection). This post, with as many links to the scores as I can find, is in response to a friend's asking for the music.

1. Adelaide, Op. 46. (N. Coste)

2. String Qt no. 9 in C major, Op. 59 no. 3 "Razumovsky": 2nd movement, Andante con moto quasi allegretto (Vincenz Schuster)

3. Potpourri on favourite themes of Beethoven (A. Diabelli)

4. Piano Sonata #12 in A flat major, Op. 26, 'Marche Funebre' (Sigismund Volker)

5. Andate varie and Rondeau op. 26 (F. Carulli op. 155)

6. Tema con variazioni: Andante cantabile (V. Schuster op. 4)

6. Serenade for Violin, Viola and Guitar in D major, Op. 8 (Wenzel Matiegka)