Acoustical evolution of the viola da gamba
D. Murray Campbell, J. Patricia Campbell, Jim Woodhouse · The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America · 2015
The viola da gamba (or viol) emerged as a distinctive type of bowed string instrument during the fifteenth century. Its characteristics include a fingerboard with gut frets and between five and seven strings tuned in fourths with a central major third. By the end of the fifteenth century, the instrument was being constructed in a range of sizes. To investigate the acoustical significance of design changes during the evolution of the viol family in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries admittance measurements at the bridge have been made on a wide variety of reproductions of viols and other early bowed-string instruments. A comparison of the results with existing data on modern violin-family instruments, and other stringed instruments such as guitars, reveals that the acoustic behavior of viols is more disparate than that of violins or guitars. Models that have been measured include examples with and without a soundpost, and a correspondingly wide range of frequency responses is seen. The influence of the viol bridge and the significance of the adoption of overwound bass strings are also discussed.