Synthetic core harp basses “AR”

Since the beginning of the XX century harp wound bass strings had been manufactured with a natural silk core wound with a round section silvered copper wire. It was only after 1950 that the use of nylon fibers began. Strings manufactured with this material have different characteristics to silk strings (greater sustain, greater stability in changing climatic conditions, greater elongation during tuning and, in general, a more ‘metallic’ acoustic performance).

The development of a new synthetic product in the form of a multifilament alternative to nylon, with characteristics more similar to silk, has always been a key focus of our research work. Nylgut® in multifilament represents the culmination of this research, allowing the rediscovery of a sound that’s different from that of polyamides, complemented by excellent tuning stability, superior to that of the best Nylon strings.

How does our coding work?

The numerical part of our AR codes expresses the theoretical diameter of the hypothetical natural gut string (i.e. its ‘gut equivalent’)

For example: AR212 means that the silk-core wound string has an equivalent gut diameter of 2.12 mm (useful for calculations).

Please note: the progression of diameters in our AR series proceeds in increasing intervals of one semitone at a time starting with the thinnest at AR178.