Strings for Historical Harps

These are oiled beef gut strings specifically designed for plucked instruments such as historical Harps and Lutes. In order to cover all needs, different string lengths are available. F and C strings can be colored blue and red, following a historical tradition whose first mention is found in Mersenne (Harmonie Universelle, Parigi 1636).

Our NGH synthetic strings are made from New Nylgut®, a material which represents a good synthesis of the mechanical and acoustical properties of nylon and of PVF (carbon) strings.

Made of a newly discovered Italian bio-plastic derived from sugar cane, which we call ‘Sugar’, the SHN type synthetic strings offer a bright and clean sound of great acoustic power.

From the limited historical and iconographic known sources, we know that wound strings were used for the low basses on harps starting from mid-18th century. These strings were made from parallel genuine silk filament cores overspun with silver-plated copper wire. After careful studies, for the AS-type basses we decided to adopt metal/core ratios derived from the studies on original basses dating back to 1797 and now preserved in Paris.

After 1950, a synthetic Nylon core began to be used on the overspun bass strings of harps. Such strings had different characteristics from silk core strings (greater sustain, greater stability to climatic changes, greater elongation when tuning, and, in general, a more ‘metallic’ acoustic performance). To bring us closer to the sound of silk cores, we introduced AR basses with Nylgut multifilament cores.