Quote:
Originally Posted by rick-slo
String stiffness well established as leading to the need for various compensations (as I pointed out in steel versus nylon strings). Naturally
other factors in play.
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We'd have to be careful what stiffness is meant here. You seem to be referring to elasticity/stretchyness but there's also the ease with which a string will bend.
The layman's explanation of why compensation is needed is that the string tension increases when you push down the string, causing pitch to rise. With nylon strings this is largely compensated by the fact that the material stretches and thus becomes thinner (because of this nylon strings also always stabilise at a lower tension than the calculated theoretical value based on their unloaded properties).
Observation: I'm currently using Pyramid Tape Nylon wounds, e-guitar strings that have a (black) nylon. tape winding over very thin wound steel strings. These are known to be very sensitive to fretting too hard (they go noticeably sharp) but the D and E also require significantly more compensation (the low E is in fact unusable because of this). I'm pretty certain they are as non-stretchy as any other steel string so it's almost certainly not that stiffness which explains there greater need for comensation.