Re: technical string question

In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, J. Teske
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes
>It is usually chrome steel and some brands even plug that into their
>trade name e.g. "chromecore". Some will be coated with other metals
>notably gold...extremely thin gold...since the cost differential
>between coated and non coated is rather small.  I don't know if chrome
>steel is considered to be part of the stainless family.

Chrome is the usual main ingredient of corrosion resistant steels,
though many others (mostly more expensive) have a similar effect.  The
classical "stainless" steel, known as "18/8", has 18% chromium and 8%
nickel.  In my brief experience of metallurgy, "stainless" was a term
not often used; in the context of steel structures, we discussed the
somewhat larger class of "alloy" steels, most of which are corrosion
resistant.  These contain also manganese, cobalt, vanadium, tungsten and
molybdenum.  AFAIK they all have higher tensile strength than mild
steels, which matters in the context of violin strings; I would not be
surprised to learn that E-string steel contained nickel (which is more
abundant than chromium).

I like the idea of gold plating.  Gold is even more resistant to
corrosion by most reagents than even the best alloy steels and its high
(19.3) density makes a positive (albeit minimal, because the layer will
be very thin) contribution to the acoustic characteristics of the
string.  For the same reason, I would expect silver (density 10.5) wound
strings to sound marginally better than aluminium (2.7) ones.  Does
anyone offer carbon fibre cores for wound strings?

>I do know that
>never in my violinistic career have I ever had a steel string rust. (I
>only use steel strings for my E string.)  All the others are synthetic
>core.

-- 
Ken Moore
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
pg composition student, University of Reading