source file: m1410.txt
Date: Sat, 9 May 1998 16:01:46 -0500 (CDT)

Subject: Re:  TUNING digest 1404

From: mr88cet@texas.net (Gary Morrison)

>   True, we have evidence that lutes and viols were capable of ET shortly after
>the Mersenne ratios were published

   Does anybody know of any significant body (i.e., not just one or two
here and there) of fretted stringed instruments from Western culture since
mid-late Baroque times, deliberately intended to be tuned to other than
12TET?

   Now obviously I'm excluding from that two sorts of instruments:
1.  Explicitly microtonal instruments from very recent times, like the guitars
    that many of we tuning-listers have explicitly refretted.
2.  Systematic imprecision, such as using the "rule of the 18th" to place frets
    rather than the actual 12th root of two, or insufficient bridge or nut
    corrections.