Last night while remounting the thinnest 7th string on my banana-leaf shaped ZhangYong qin, I was quite surprised that the 'tassle fabric' of the RongKou that held the guqin strings in place at the bridge could 'stretch' a little. Who cares? So what? Well, this is very important because if the material holding the silk strings (or metal-nylon strings) in place at the bridge can stretch, the tuning would 'run' easily when a person is playing the guqin.
I knew it wasn't the JinWu silk string stretching as the same exact string had been previously used on my other JunTiangFang qin. Then it occurred to me that the RongKou fabric strings may not be made of silk (as they were on my JunTianFang qin). They may be made of some kind of polyester-nylon-cotton composite which may stretch a little under tension.
The 1st picture with black rongkou tassles is from my ZhangYong qin. The 2nd and 3rd pictures with red RongKou tassles is from my JunTianFang qin. You can clearly see the differences.
To be fair, it may not be the guqin maker ZhangYong himself who mounted the rongkou, maybe it's the taobao shop which accessorized the qin and because this qin is only considered by the guqin maker himself to be mid-level quality (he has higher priced qins which are of higher quality), of course the accessories used may also be of lower quality. I am not complaining though, I still love this beautiful qin. Everything has merits and flaws, as do I, so the qin and I just have to learn to live with each other. Hahaha
I knew it wasn't the JinWu silk string stretching as the same exact string had been previously used on my other JunTiangFang qin. Then it occurred to me that the RongKou fabric strings may not be made of silk (as they were on my JunTianFang qin). They may be made of some kind of polyester-nylon-cotton composite which may stretch a little under tension.
The 1st picture with black rongkou tassles is from my ZhangYong qin. The 2nd and 3rd pictures with red RongKou tassles is from my JunTianFang qin. You can clearly see the differences.
To be fair, it may not be the guqin maker ZhangYong himself who mounted the rongkou, maybe it's the taobao shop which accessorized the qin and because this qin is only considered by the guqin maker himself to be mid-level quality (he has higher priced qins which are of higher quality), of course the accessories used may also be of lower quality. I am not complaining though, I still love this beautiful qin. Everything has merits and flaws, as do I, so the qin and I just have to learn to live with each other. Hahaha
(Picture 1: banana-leaf shaped ZhangYong qin, probably with polyester-nylon-cotton Rongkou tassles)
(Pictures 2 and 3: JunTianFang qin with genuine silk Rongkou tassles)
The guqin master Wu Zhao also mentioned about this issue in his video (from 1:30 onwards).
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