Abstract This article compiles all known primary-source documentation from the 17th to the 19th centuries on the diameters of gut double bass strings, building on the brief discussion of this topic presented in Patrizio Barbieri’s 2006 article ‘Roman and Neapolitan gut strings: 1550–1950’ (Galpin Society Journal, lix (2006), pp. 147–81). I contextualize and offer new interpretations of some of the measurements that Barbieri reports with respect to the double bass. I then expand the pool of sources from the primarily scientific and technical manuals referred to in Barbieri’s article to include additional treatises, personal accounts and historical double bass methods. While no standards for a specific period or location can be definitively established, this survey of known primary sources indicates that the gut strings commonly stocked by string makers and used by period double bassists today are thinner than the strings made and used by their respective historical counterparts.
Shanti Nachtergaele (Sat,) studied this question.