After reading about some of the Scandinavian makers and listening to a couple of the players I've been experimenting with nylon core strings (for extended range classical guitar) as the low C course on my 650mm scale cittern. I find that while the attack is a little softer than steel and they need some finessing of my picking technique, they give a nice sustained depth under chords and they're also sweeter and clearer pitched when capoing up the neck.
I could find relatively little information about scale lengths, pitches and tension for nylon core strings, compared to what's available for steel core strings, so I thought a thread might be useful. As a starting point I picked up a couple of D'addario NYL058W strings purely because someone was clearing stock of those cheaply on eBay. From what I can find online, a low C on a similar scale classical guitar would typically be around 0.052" or 0.053“, but I took a guess that erring towards higher tension might help when blending them with steel strings. I've tried both octave and unison stringing on this instrument, and currently I'm enjoying unison CGDAD.
I'd be curious to hear about anyone else's experiences with nylon strings for a low C or D course, and if there are any good sources of tension information that I've missed.
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