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On 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 dried (which affects the latter of course and also the percentage of core versus metal), and how much the metal wire is stretched from the hand of the maker (which again can result in a false string for the inconsistency of gauge of the wire but also of the core, because the hand pulling to much the wire will also pull the core and stretching it...)
In this old video Mimmo Peruffo is showing at Aquila strings factory how he makes a Cello C
For the complete video click here:
Bosko and Honey are two ukulele virtuoso players from Australia whom in 2008 toured the world with their project Ukulele Safari. Basically they were able to spend one year around the globe hosted from the network of ukulele players that they knew through their youtube channel. A great couple. They visited Vicenza participating to the first
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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
How the gauge is determined at the polishing and on half polished and smooth strings…. Can you guess why you can never be sure of the quality of a polished string? Want to know more? There’s a downloadable report here, it’s free, no opt-in!
Read MoreHere is the video from the famous BBC serie “How it’s made” , recorded in April 2012 in Caldogno (Vicenza, Italy) at the Aquila strings factory. We tried to prepare everything to show them the whole process, but they didn’t want to film the smelly initial part. I’m the one who plays and who scrapes the guts
Read MoreDrying, polishing, packaging The strings dried and still on the frames were polished by hand, using horse hair, or equisetum, polish stone or powder, or, later, sandpaper. About horse hairs: equisetum is also called horse tail, so for a long time wi thought that when they say we polished with horse tail, they were referring to
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