Tone quality

[Robin Blankenship]

Wow!! Thank you, Ron. I never would have thought of that!! You're a life
saver.
Robin

 >
 > My first guess, with the qualification that the two strings were a good
> match originally, is corrosion. Two fairly widely dissimilar metals in
> contact in the presence of an electrolyte will corrode. The steel core is
> the more electrochemically reactive of the copper alloy/steel combination,
> and with enough room humidity, will rust slightly over a period of time.
> The changes in stiffness, density, friction between copper and steel, and
> between the copper wraps will alter the partial structure of the string.
> The strings don't necessarily both change at the same rates and in the
same
> manner, so they become harder to tune together, and to anything else, as
> time goes on. Trichords are at least half again as bad (more, in my
> opinion), as bichords. That is, if you can get strings made so a wrapped
> trichord is tunable in the first place.
>
> On further consideration, I think that's my second guess too.
>
> Ron N