minstrel: guitar history???

[Blue]

At 20:14 28/02/03 -0800, Tadhg O Cuileannain wrote:
>Then there are a host of ethnic instruments such as
>the cuatro and the vihuela, which are available from
>Lark in the Morning (there have been negative remarks
>about them on this list, but I will vouch for their
>$300 Puerto Rican Cuatro--it's a nice instrument if
>you put nylon strings on it).

On the matter of puerto rican cuatros, www.hobgoblin-usa.com appear to 
stock the same instrument as I just bought from their UK online store last 
week, their price is $145. I can vouch for the quality of it, nicely made, 
lovely sound and I would imagine it would work well in period simply by 
being so unusual.

I'm curiious about your putting nylon strings on, did you also use nylon on 
the doubled octave strings for the low B and E strings (assuming you are 
tuning B E A D G), and how effective was that? Any recommendations of 
suitable period music would be most welcome...

Blue