String materials

[Antimon]

While walking back from having bought breakfast bread just now I came to thinking about guitar strings. I got a smallish acoustic guitar from a friend a while back. It had five old metal strings on it, that were tuned down a bit and sounded kind of cool. I recorded a couple of dittys with it, then I changed the strings to nylon because its neck is wide and I wasn't in possession of a nylon string at the time.

I'm thinking about changing back to steel strings to get that cool sound, but anyway I got to thinking now as I walked about that the steel strings (though I guess it's nickel really, or some alloy) are kind of cool, the way they're made thick and flexible and fairly durable. They do snap though... so I thought about silk, and how I've heard that there's nothing like silk in terms of strength vs diameter.

So... could you make some awesome guitar strings out of silk (I guess it would be expensive though)? Are there other materials that have been used, besides the common nylon and nickel? I recall hearing something about tendons being used for strings in the olden days.

Most importantly perhaps, what different kinds of sounds can you get out of different kinds of strings?

Just some sunday morning musings...

/Stefan

[blue hell]

Silk seems to have some history ... http://www.silkqin.com/03qobj/strings/raykovstrings.htm

[[Q]]

The Guqin uses silk strings

NAGA New Silk String

http://www.chineseculture.net/musicmall/instruments/htmls/guqin/naganewsilkstring.htm

http://www.guqin.org/

[Oskar]

Martin - and possibly others - make strings with BOTH silk and steel.

http://www.martinguitar.com/strings/choosing.php?typ=Martin%20Folk

[Antimon]

Interesting, all. I should have guessed that silk had already been done in East Asia!