Student Lute?
 

Does anyone know of a place to get relatively cheap lutes (around $500)? I'm a Musicology student and am looking to be a Music History Teacher and figured a lute would be a great way to demonstrate earlier music.

Hopefully my reply is better late than never.

For lutes in that price range, the only supplier I know of is the Early Music Shop in the UK. I know that Lark in the Morning carries them in the US, but I think there are a few other places that do, too.

I have one of these lutes (from 2005 or so) and if they're still as bad as mine, I would strongly warn against getting one.

The setup is almost unusable. The fit of the pegs is comically bad. You can see daylight through the gaps. I looked into getting it professionally set up once (maybe 10 years ago), but luthiers who know their way around a lute are few and far between and it looked like it would cost almost as much as the instrument itself (still less than they charge for them now, though).

That said, they may well have improved their quality since then, but I haven't seen any newer lutes from them to know one way or another.

Another place to check would be the Lute Society of America. They have a lute rental program and they link to a private sale listing site.

Would it be possible to stretch your $500's buying power by finding a used one? With guitars, buying used can sometimes help, and at this price point, you'll need every advantage you can get. Can your musicology professor(s) guide you?

Maybe eBay? https://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-11-...AAAOSwf15Z0Uq2

https://www.ebay.com/itm/S-W-OLIVER-....c100005.m1851

cotten

Yeah I'd be all for buying used

Thank you this is very helpful

You could also look at a lute guitar. They have the bowl back like a lute but have six standard strings like a guitar. You could find a nice one for $500.

I have an 8 course lute and I find it difficult to learn how to play it. So much so that I bought a 10 string classical guitar to replace it. I am still going to learn how to play the lute as it is very well made and sounds nice. It is a custom made instrument by Dan Lankford in the states. It cost around $2000 but it was worth it to me. Here is a link to his website and the lute that I bought from him through that auction site.

https://sites.google.com/site/danthe.../photo-gallery

For your purposes, bernabe's suggestion of a "lute"-guitar possibly may be most efficacious. If however you were interested in pursuing lute study, of course you may be willing to invest in the cost of an instrument. I've played examples of the low-cost offerings from EMS and such and, as previously mentioned, aspects such as pegs, fittings and structural elements vital in set-up are lacking.

I am interested more in lute study specifically instead of just a lute like sound if that makes sense.

Well in that case, you should seek obtaining a lute. Baroque? Renaissance? I like the oud myself - I like a lot of medieval stuff..

That's a good point. There are a lot of different sorts of lutes out there. Maybe you could spend a few months renting from the LSA? They have quite an impressive rental fleet. It would make it easy to try out a few different styles to find what you like best. http://www.lutesocietyofamerica.org/page-18137

Once you get in touch with folks at the lute society, you could also ask them about good places to buy your forever lute. Hard to find a better source of info than them, I imagine.

I played the lute for several years, eventually reaching the beginnings of being an intermediate player.

I stopped playing for several reasons:

While its true you can play almost anything on the instrument, it has what I call a "limited repertoire of traditional pieces" that lock one into playing certain styles.

Then too, the instrument has a limited tonal range and is not as expressive an instrument as a guitar.

It's lack of volume and sustain also are not to my taste.

Finally, it takes a lot of dedication in practice to "keep one's hands in" to play. I found that the time it took to keep up my playing took away time from playing guitar and writing.

For me, the initial interest was the English School of Lutenists and Songwriters. Once initiated, I moved on.

There's an old joke about the instrument: lutenists spend half of their time tuning the instrument, and the other half of their time playing out of tune.

Not trying to be a wet blanket here, these are just some of my experiences with the instrument. It does have a beautiful, if limited sound.

BTW, my instrument was a 13 course Renaissance lute. I would recommend that instrument over the larger and more multi-stringed Baroque lute for a beginner.