Practical issues in designing strings for different-sized bowed instruments
Fan-Chia Tao · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2006
The playing length and frequency of musical strings are fixed by the design of the instrument. The playing tensions of commercially available strings for standard bowed instruments follow an approximately linear scaling law in relation to string length. However, the string designer can adjust the playing tension to yield different results, and playing tensions have changed throughout history as string technology and playing techniques have evolved. Another string property that can be varied by the string designer is damping. Empirical data suggest that over a wide variety of bowed instruments and frequency ranges, strings with similar damping give similar playing characteristics.