Pirastro Olive variants

[lwl]

I've noticed that Pirastro's Olives come in a large variety of gauges -- much more than the usual light-medium-heavy gauge.

How do you choose the appropriate gauge?

Also, the G and D come in "stiff" and regular varieties. The "stiff" versions also come in a range of gauges. What's the difference between "stiff" and not?

[Andrew Victor]

Lydia,

I'm not positive, but siffer strings seem to "suffer" from some anharmonic overtones. This is not necessarily a bad thing, since these slightly off "harmoinc ladders" acan really punch the sound of the lower strings through.

Try hitting some low notes on a piano to hear anharmonic overtones. They certainly give the instrument's sound an interesting character.

Andy

[farmerjohn]

Maybe a little tangent...

Are the tension differences of strings, between the different gauges, or steel vs. synthetic, etc., enough to affect the integrity of the violin?

Seems that if the original designers of the violin didn't anticipate the higher tension strings of today, then we could see structural problems, e.g., warping, need for neck resets.

[staylor]

Is it not true that the thinner the string, the louder it plays? (and the thicker the quieter)

Stiff may be like thin, but I don't know. But I'm asking about my above understanding which I was once told.

S.Taylor

[oldgeezer]

Check out Quinn Violins at http://64.33.91.25/home_neu.html

They recommend stiff and have the best price right now on Olives. Sometimes I’m tempted to go back to gut.

[Tononi]

It is my understanding that STaylor is correct. I have recently installed the light gauge olives on one of my violins, the projective quality was better than with the thicker strings, and the olive tends to have a bit les volume than most synthetic strings. The increase in sound level I believe to be due to the increase in tention. The smaller diameter string must be tighter in order to produce the same pitch. A similar effect occures when the string is longer as well, and as we all know bridge positioning has a large effect on tone.

I believe I have made a short story long...

The light gauge Olive strings I got are very nice and each instrument has differnt needs.

Tony

[staylor]

quote:

---

Originally posted by oldgeezer:

Check out Quinn Violins at

http://64.33.91.25/home_neu.html

They recommend stiff and have the best price right now on Olives. Sometimes I’m tempted to go back to gut.

---

I see some different Pirastros, but no olives!

[oldgeezer]

From http://64.33.91.25/home_neu.html

click on strings, click on violin, click on Pirastro,scroll down to Olives which says:

"Olive Premiere gut core string. The version "Oliv Stiff" is recommended to the soloist, the chamber musician, and the orchestra musician because of the stronger tone. Non-Stiff strings do not have sufficient resistence to bow pressure of most players technique. 4/4 only."

I don't think a native English speaker wrote this.Click on the package to get prices.

[lwl]

Higher tension/thicker string = greater volume, slower response

Lower tension/thinner string = less volume, faster response

[Hank Schutz]

You can read a good and fairly concise discussion of string acoustics at http://emc2.acu.edu/acoustics/askill/chapter6.html

It is somewhat mathematical at times, but you can skip those parts if you want.

String "thickness" is really only part of the story. The determinant of pitch is "mass per unit length" (or linear density) rather than thickness. It is possible that a thick gut string may have lower density than a thin steel string, because steel is more dense than gut.

Also, the thicker, less flexible, and shorter a string gets, the less exactly it obeys the theoretical "laws of strings." In the extreme, this can make it more difficult to play in tune on short, thick, stiff stings (although I doubt this effect could be noticed on any commercial strings available for use on stringed instruments.) The density of the string (more than the thickness) also effects the responsiveness, since a more massive string will take more time and energy to start vibrating.

So the situation in which thickness should be considered is in comparing strings of the SAME material. In that case, thickness is essentially the same as linear density.

HS