Thomann Arch Lute / Arciliuto

Sound: the sound is clear and of good quality. Since it's a small sized theorbo, it doesn't go as loud as other bigger instruments of the same kind, but the sound is very good nonetheless.

Quality: the overall quality is very good, even though you can see that the manufacturer has been quite scarce on the glue, especially on the 2nd neck. That being said, it's not a problem and the instrument is very playable out of the box (providing you spent two hours tuning it but that's just because it's a theorbo).

The strings aren't that good, they do an honest job but providing yourself with a new set of strings makes the instrument sound 10 times better. They are also quite close to each other, which can sometimes be a tad bit confusing, but once you get used to it it's not much of a problem.

Overall, very happy with the product, even though it's far from perfect, it's still amazingly good considering how cheap its price is. It especially shines when playing solo repertoire, due to the size and shape of it. Great product for beginners and budget-friendly buyers.

This is my first lute, so I had it inspected by a professional lute builder (40+ years of experience, built instruments for and hung out with all the big names in the lute world) and he was very pleasantly surprised by the build quality, sound and playability of the instrument.

I have replaced the strings with Aquila Nylgut, and I have replaced the frets with gut frets, which made it sound a lot better than the nylon strings which came with the instrument.

We also modified some things, but be careful since this probably void the warranty. We have drilled new holes into the first, seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth string pegs which allows for winding the strings outside their respective peg boxes. This way the strings travel in a straighter line and it’s easier to tune the instrument. We have also shifted the strings on the extension neck by filing two extra string slots to the right on the wooden nut (the nineteenth string sits in the slot of the seventeenth now, 18th in the 16th etc.), which also allows for straighter string travel, and also the strings do not rub against each other or against wood inside the pegbox.

Even without the mods it’s a great instrument, and I wholeheartedly recommend it.

Come prima cosa ci sarebbe da chiarire che si tratta piuttosto di un Arciliuto anziché di una Tiorba. Interessante notare che anche sul catalogo di corde della Pyramid viene utilizzata la parola "Theorbo" nei set che per la loro accordatura (non rientrante) corrisponderebbero a quelli dell'Arciliuto. Quindi, c'è questa ambiguità per quanto riguarda la denominazione.
Lo strumento è tale e quale potete vederlo in foto. Ci suono sopra da 9 mesi e non ho avuto nessuna sorpresa sgradevole. Funziona e suona in modo soddisfacente.
Le lunghezze vibranti sono: 65 cm per le corde tastate e 104 per la tratta, in perfetta proporzione aurea.
Certamente, e come è normale che sia, bisogna cambiare le corde calcolando diametri, altezze e materiali basandosi su dei criteri pertinenti alle conoscenze sulla prassi della musica antica su strumenti a pizzico. Le corde che
vengono montate (in nylon) non sono, a mio avviso, le corde che meglio si adiscono allo strumento.

First of all, the word "theorbo" is very inapropriate to use in the description of the instrument. The Theorbo is a renaissance instrument with longer bass neck, single-string courses, and a lower tuning.

Archlute is an early baroque instrument developed as a combination between the renaissance lute and the theorbo for the sake of having the high range and the double-string courses of the lute but also the bass strings of the theorbo.

Overall, the instrument is nice but I was quite disappointed about how the nuts are made. High strings kept breaking and when you buy high quality gut strings which are quite expensive, it becomes a problem. I had to refile and sand the string slots myself and I find this unacceptable for an instrument in such a price range.

The peg box for the bass strings is too small and the pegs are hard to rotate, also it's very narrow and some strings are extremely difficult to tie to the pegs. In addition, the entire peg box is designed in such a way that it has a big vertical offset from the string natural direction so the nut there has to redirect some of the strings by a 45º to the right side which causes unnecessary friction to the top edge of the peg box and the lower strings to pop out of the slot very easily.

Nevertheless, if we ingore that, the archlute sounds quite nice and it's comfortable to play once you fix the nuts, set it all up properly and put gut strings in there. Just an important notice that this instrument should be tuned to A = 415 Hz (baroque tuning) because on such a scale length (67 cm on the short strings) it's impossible to tune the 1st string to g according to A = 440 Hz.