From historical process to modern, from sheep to cow.
In this video I forgot to mention the most important thing: the use of bovine guts permitted to avoid a big part of the process, saving days of work and dozens of workers, and, last but not least, working with a standardized material, always same size.
If today a company is using sheep and is using historical process, that means all the previous steps I mentioned, employing all that people (at least 20) to keep the timing (to prevent the guts to decompose), and making something like 500 Strings per week (which, today, are not enough to pay for 20 people)
C’mon let’s twist again… We finally have our guts ready, well cleaned, softened, hardened, selected: we are ready to use the wheel and give some twisting! …then we take our protostrings and we put them on the frame, where we give more twisting, we check the tension is fine, we constantly check they don’t dry
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baroque music, double-bass strings, early music, gut strings, gut strings history, gut strings maintenance, gut strings manufacture, viol strings, viola da gamba strings, viola strings, violin strings, violoncello strings
Not only sheeps or lambs… you will be surprised to learn! My sources for this video are the letters of Roberto Salerni, the interviews to the old string makers in Salle, and Labarraque “Nuovo dizionario universale tecnologico delle arti e dei mestieri…”, “Minugiaio”, Venezia 1823
Read MoreFrom the famous BBC serie …the string maker is at minute 39′, the hands of the string maker belogs to Mr. George Stoppani
Read MoreOn the sensibility required to make wound strings Wound strings are a matter of hand sensibility and control of the string maker: even if a machine is involved, it is real craftsmanship to make a good wound string. The factors involved are many, from the quality and gauge of the core, how much it is
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