DaveH
Oud Junkie
Posts: 526
Registered: 12-23-2005
Location: Birmingham, UK
Member Is Offline
Mood: No Mood
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String calculator
Hi All
I saw a few threads relating to string tension and I wondered if this attempt I made a while back at a string tension calculator might be useful to
people looking at putting together a custom string set. The idea is you put all the parameters in and it will tell you the gauge you need.
There's nothing new or remarkable about it - you can find tables on Matthias's site and through Pyramid, or there's a "string by string" version here and many people have probably worked up something similar. The advantage of this one is that you can do all the strings together, arranged by
course, in a semi-graphical manner, then save the configuration for a particular instrument. You can also select the string material you want from a
drop-down menu which enables you to play around a bit and look at effects on relative and total tension.
The big disadvantage is it only works for strings of uniform density - ie not for wound strings, which require different and more complex formulae.
The only options that work are therefore nylon, nylgut and flourocarbon (someday I want to try gut strings on the oud - when I'm richer). While this
might mean it's totally useless for your base courses, most string manufacturers do also quote gauges as a "gut equivalent" (ie the gauge the string
would be if it were made out of gut) so it could still be useful.
It's set up for my renaissance lute, so you need to select notes & frequencies for your tuning (they're included in one of the sheets) as well as
string lengths (individually, I'm afraid as they're not necessarily all the same for a lute).
I'm afraid I don't have much of an idea of guidelines for individual string tensions on ouds. Between 2-3 kg per string is the general area, I think.
There's a school of thought in lute circles that tension should decrease towards the bases.
So I don't know how useful this will be, but I thought I'd just throw it out there - it might be fun to play with.
D
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fernandraynaud
Oud Junkie
Posts: 1865
Registered: 7-25-2009
Location: San Francisco, California
Member Is Offline
Mood: m'Oudy
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Dave,
Frankly, without the wound strings, it's not a super-useful tool. Have you tried simply reverse-calculating the aggregate densities of wound strings?
When I had tried that, with the old tension calculators, the results were not so far off as to be unusable. There's got to be a way to work that into
your program.
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