Quality of the string

0  comments

What to check and what to avoid when you are choosing your strings.

The most important thing to check is that the twisting of your string is even in the whole vibrating lenght. No white spots, no open twist, no different angles. You can easily feel those by Mersenne's test.

What is less important is the color. Strings shouldn't be too white, it means they are bleached too much with chemicals. I wouldn't matter if they are yellow or brown, it is really just a matter of how they are cleaned, disinfected, and chemically treated. Brown strings can sound fantastic in the middle and basses, but I would prefer straw yellow for the chanterelles. Not too bleached, but perfectly clean.


Tags

baroque music, double-bass strings, early music, gut strings, gut strings maintenance, viol strings, viola da gamba strings, viola strings, violin strings, violoncello strings


You may also like

What makes a good gut string?

Good gut strings: where do they come from? What does really make a difference for the quality of a gut string: in my opinion, the first factor which really affects the final quality of a string is that the numbers of gut strands used is balanced to the gauge we want to obtain. This is

Read More

Quality of strings from a painting

What shall we look in paintings Pictures from an exhibition in Venaria Reale, Torino (Italy), of restaured masterpieces from Renaissance. I loved that “soft” string…

Read More

Fancy mix is not a good idea

Why if you work in difficult climate conditions it is fundamental that you use strings from only one company and you don’t do fancy mix up… Every strings tends togo back to its past conditions, so as every string maker twist them and stretches them differently, it’s really complicate to deal with strings from different

Read More