- HISTORICAL GUITAR SETS -
                                                                               All our strings are entirely hand-made
Have a look here, please, before placing an order:

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            Antonio de Torres guitar (Opus 111, 1887) with a Llobet's musics and  Gut & Silk strings
                                                        



           Antonio de Torres guitar: details of the bridge (with Gut & Silk strings) and the rosette


...and now the sound of the Antonio de Torres- guitar strung with a  Gut & Silk set:



          Stefano Grondona plays three catalan folk songs by Miguel Llobet (1878-1938):

example 1 El testament d'Amelia ( 938 KB)
example 2 Cançò de Lladre (710 KB) 
example 3 La filla del Marxant (942 KB )                        



                                         Miguel Llobet                                                   Antonio De Torres (1885 ca)

- GUT & SILK SET (1880-1946 performances) -


 Up to the middle of the 20th century, the only available strings for guitar were plain gut for the trebles and wound on silk core for the basses.
Their acoustical performance was quite different from that of modern stringings. The salient characteristics were a marked timbric presence, response and brightness typical of the thinner gut strings (certainly superior to plain nylon and in some respects closer to PVDF or carbon) while the basses, on the other hand, possessed an exquisitely vocal quality, i.e. not so bright as, and with less sustain than, modern wound on nylon strings and more fundamental heavy. 
The Treble tension- profile is not true scaling (like in use in all of the modern guitar's sets): it is just ligthly scaling, like the standard of that time.
This set which is made with only one degree, of tension, riproposes excatly a historical assembling, tipycal of the period of Llobet and Tàrrega by using oily gut for trebles and wound basses, silver-copper covered on silk, as it was said by Pujol in the "Escuela Razonada de la Guitarra" of 1934.

                                            


Please notice !
Gut is liable to suffer from cutting edges. Before stringing the instrument do make sure the nut and bridge are free from sharp edges and the nut grooves not too deep and perfectly smooth.
You can get rid of sharp edges with very fine grit sandpaper (600, for example) or the finest steelwool (000).

The best sound quality develops when the strings have completely set, which may ordinarily take sometime. To achieve a stable intonation in just a few minutes you can repeatedly pinch each string  at midlength with your fingers, pull it decidedly sideways and tune it up again. Stop when the string does not pull out of tune anymore.

- GUT & SILK SET:

                             EUR             35.00           Eur 29.17 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- GUT & SILK BASSES:

                             EUR             17.00           Eur 14.17 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- GUT & SILK TREBLES:

                             EUR             20.00           Eur 16.67 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- GUT & SILK SINGLE STRINGS:

  1st         'e'          EUR               5.70           Eur 4.75 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  2nd         'h'         EUR               6.80           Eur 5.67 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  3rd         'g'          EUR               8.60           Eur 7.17 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  4th         'D'         EUR               5.50           Eur 4.58 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  5th         'A'         EUR               6.00           Eur 5.00 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  6th         'E'         EUR               6.60           Eur 5.50 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

+ IVA   -   VAT   -   TVA -   (except for non-EU customers)





- AMBRA SET (The syntetic version of the 'Gut & Silk' set)-

Up to the middle of the 20th century, the only available strings for guitar were plain gut for the trebles and wound on silk core for the basses: their acoustical performance was quite different from that of modern stringings.
The salient characteristics were: a marked timbric presence, response and brightness typical of the gut strings (certainly superior to plain nylon and in some respects closer to PVDF or carbon) while the basses, on the other hand, possessed an exquisitely vocal quality, i.e. not so bright as, and with less sustain than, modern wound on nylon strings and more fundamental heavy.
Our Ambra set was developed keeping in mind this historical fact, in order to best re-create, by means of modern synthetic materials, the sound of Llobet and Tàrrega. This set was conceived for one grade of tension and cosists of Nylgut® - true synthetic gut, we are tempted to say - for the trebles, adopting the representative mean diameters as indicated by Pujol in his "Escuela Razonada de la Guitarra" from 1934 (less scaling tension than the modern gyuitar trebles), while for the basses (silvered copper wires wound on Nylgut® multifilament core) we tried to find the right balance between wire and core, which would recreate exactly the typical sound of the wound silk strings of the time.

TO ALL OUR  US- CUSTOMERS:
THE FOLOWER PRICES ARE LOWERED OF THE 18%

- AMBRA SET:

                             EUR           13.50           Eur 9.23 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- AMBRA BASSES:

                             EUR             9.00           Eur 6.15 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- AMBRA TREBLES:

                             EUR             5.50           Eur3.76 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- AMBRA SINGLE STRINGS:

  1st         'e'          EUR             1.90           Eur 1.30 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  2nd         'h'         EUR             1.90           Eur 1.30 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  3rd         'g'          EUR             2.20           Eur 1.50 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  4th         'D'         EUR             3.10           Eur 2.12 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  5th         'A'         EUR             3.30           Eur 2.26 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  6th         'E'         EUR             3.40           Eur 2.32 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

+ IVA   -   VAT   -   TVA -   (except for non-EU customers)



  Tensions  (Kg)/Gauges (mm)

Note

Gut&Silk/Ambra

         Gauges (mm)    

mi

8,6 Kg

       .67   Gut or Nylgut

si

7,6 Kg

       .85   Gut or Nylgut

sol

6,7 Kg

     1.04   Gut or Nylgut

RE

6,0 Kg

    wound on silk core  1.40 mm equiv. gut

LA

7,7 Kg

    wound  on silk core 2.00 mm equiv. gut

MI

7,5 Kg

    wound on silk core  2.50 mm equiv. gut



                                                                              
        
      Antonio de Torres guitar: nut-detail                                            Torres'label
           

     HOW TO ORDER
    HOW TO PAY
...........................................................................................................................................

                           - 19th CENTURY GUITAR SETS  -




                                               
            - Fernando Sor's method, 1st half of the XIX century: guitar string gauges are the same of the violin  ones -                                                 




                       

              - Ferdinando Carulli method 1810 ca: guitar string gauges are the same of the violin ones -







...and now the sound of two Petitjean Lainè- guitars (Mirecourt, early 19th c.) strung with Nylgut trebles and silk basses

          

   Laura Mondiello and Giuseppe Carrer    


-Fernando Sor (1778-1839): example Fantasia Op. 54 bis: fragment of Andante (1.57 MB)

-Fernando Sor (1778-1839): example  Fantasia Op. 54 bis: fragment of  Variations and Finale (1.38 MB) 

-Fernando Sor (1778-1839): example Fantasia Op. 54 bis: fragment of Finale (1.13 MB)


Please notice !
-Gut is liable to suffer from cutting edges. Before stringing the instrument do make sure the nut and bridge are free from sharp edges and the nut grooves not too deep and perfectly smooth.
You can get rid of sharp edges with very fine grit sandpaper (600, for example) or the finest steelwool (000).

-The best sound quality develops when the strings have completely set, which may ordinarily take sometime. To achieve a stable intonation in just a few minutes you can repeatedly pinch each string  at midlength with your fingers, pull it decidedly sideways and tune it up again. Stop when the string does not pull out of tune anymore.

 ROMANTIC GUITAR GUT& SILK  SET

     EUR             35.00           Eur 29.17 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- SILK-BASSES:

                             EUR             17.00           Eur 14.17 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- GUT -TREBLES:

                             EUR             20.00           Eur 16.67 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- SINGLE STRINGS:

  1st         'e'          EUR               5.70           Eur 4.75 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  2nd         'h'         EUR               6.80           Eur 5.67 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  3rd         'g'          EUR               8.60           Eur 7.17 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  4th         'D'         EUR               5.50           Eur 4.58 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  5th         'A'         EUR               6.00           Eur 5.00 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  6th         'E'         EUR               6.60           Eur 5.50 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

+ IVA   -   VAT   -   TVA -   (except for non-EU customers)




- Romantic guitar Nylgut set (syntetic version of the Romantic guitar Gut & Silk set) -

 - SET:

                             EUR           13.50           Eur 9.26 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

-  BASSES:

                             EUR             9.00           Eur 6.15 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

- NYLGUT TREBLES:

                             EUR             5.50           Eur 3.76 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

-  SINGLE STRINGS:

  1st         'e'          EUR             1.90           Eur 1.30 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  2nd         'h'         EUR             1.90           Eur 1.30 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  3rd         'g'          EUR             2.20           Eur 1.50 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  4th         'D'         EUR             3.10           Eur 2.12 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  5th         'A'         EUR             3.30           Eur 2.26 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

  6th         'E'         EUR             3.40           Eur 2.32 (for U. S. and Canadian customers only)

+ IVA   -   VAT   -   TVA -   (except for non-EU customers)




Note

 Gauges (mm) 

mi

.62Gut/Nylgut   

si

.79Gut/Nylgut

sol

.91Gut/Nylgut

RE

wound

LA

wound

MI

wound



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