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STRING MATERIALS

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STRING MATERIALS

what they are drawn from, how one wrap differs from another and what of that is audible

Built as a memo rather than a table: the thing worth hanging it up for reads across the room, with the full reference in smaller type below it.

Three sizes in one archive — from a sheet on the fridge to a poster on the wall.

Free

Payment and email are handled by Paddle. The download link arrives by email — no account, no password.

Formats
A4 · A3 · A2
What you get
Print-ready PDFs, one per size, with every letterform converted to outlines — nothing to install, nothing to shift.
Subject
music · beginners · reference · music room

The composition of the copper alloys is the CDA register (UNS C51000, C24000); the steel wire is ASTM A228. The thicknesses in the comparison are calculated from Mersenne’s law for the stated note, scale and tension, not taken from a catalogue.

ONE OF THE TWO “BRONZES” IS NOT BRONZE

Bronze is copper with tin. The phosphor bronze of strings is exactly that: in the CDA register it is C51000, tin 4.2–5.8 %, phosphorus 0.03–0.10 %, the rest copper, specific gravity 8.86.

What is sold as “80/20 bronze” contains no tin at all. It is copper and zinc, which is to say brass: in the same register it is C24000, listed there as “Low Brass, 80 %”, specific gravity 8.67. The packet says bronze and the composition says brass, and nothing is being broken — the name is a trade name, not a metallurgical one.

The audible difference is not in the name. Both are copper alloys, neither is ferromagnetic, and the pickup of an electric guitar hears no wrap at all: it hears the steel core underneath. That is why an acoustic string sounds quieter on an electric, and why an all-nylon string does not sound at all.

On the sheet

  • The composition of the copper alloys is the CDA register (UNS C51000, C24000); the steel wire is ASTM A228. The thicknesses in the comparison are calculated from Mersenne’s law for the stated note, scale and tension, not taken from a catalogue.
  • Colour carries meaning, but meaning never rests on colour alone — the sheet reads in black and white.
  • Nothing about how it was made: the sheet carries only what the reader needs.

Printing

  • Three sizes in the archive: A4 — 210×297 mm, A3 — 297×420 mm, A2 — 420×594 mm.
  • All text is converted to outlines. No fonts to install, and nothing shifts on another machine.
  • White background and sparing fills — it prints on a home printer without draining the cartridge.
  • Margins of at least 10 mm: a home printer cannot print to the edge.
  • No stroke thinner than 0.3 mm, so nothing disappears in print.

Why the numbers can be trusted. Every countable number here is computed from data rather than typed in, and the sheet must pass 6 independent checks before it is allowed to build — how many items there are, the order they come in, and the claim in the highlighted box itself. If one fails, there is no file.

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