Nylgut® for Banjo and Minstrel Banjo

Until mid-20th century, Banjos used exclusively gut strings, a material that had been used for thousand of years and that combines excellent promptness of attack with brilliance of timbre – very different, in other words, from modern nylon strings. And until recently, the typical sound quality of gut has been a constant point of reference for lute-makers, composers and performers alike. A fundamental aim of our research has therefore been to make a new synthetic product having the same acoustic properties as gut – but without its typical defects (high cost, limited duration and high instability under varying climatic conditions). Nylgut® has precisely these qualities, allowing the rediscovery of the sonorities that were so familiar to the great musicians of late 19th and 20th century, and at the same time ensuring a higher tuning stability, even better than the best gut and nylon strings.

The 4th string on sets 1B and 2B for Old Style Banjo is unwound. They are made up of a recently discovered bio-plastic – that we named Sugar – that has been loaded with metallic powders. Thanks to this technology, we were able to produce unwound strings with very bright sound, stable and with a smooth surface, that are not affected by the oxidation, that is typical of metal wound strings.

New Nylgut^®

New Nylgut^® is not common Nylon or Carbon (Fluocarbon fishing line or PVDF), or a mix of them. It is a plastic compound of three different components.

Compared to Nylon, New Nylgut^® produces a better sound and stays in tune better, this because the moisture absorption is less of .1% against the 2.0% of Nylon normally employed for the musical strings (i.e. Du Pont Tynex^® polyammide 6-12).

Due to the higher density, similar to that of pure gut (1.30 gr/cm3), the New Nylgut^® produces a better sound than Nylon and it is not so metallic like those of the so- called ‘Carbon’ (Fluorocarbon) PVDF strings.

In other words, the New Nylgut^® is probably the first genuine synthetic gut in the world and assures:

• a better sound than Nylon or PVDF, similar to the genuine gut strings;
• a more accurated fret-intonation due to the well gauged material;
• a very stable intonation under moisture changes.

Our sets are made using innovative materials, discovered and perfected in our laboratory after a long period of research and after being thoroughly tested, thus giving rise to a new synthetic product of high technology.

(from Aquila product information)