Albert Augustine Ltd. is the originator of and currently a manufacturer of nylon classical guitar strings. In addition, the company supports the classical guitar and guitarists by presenting several annual New York guitar series at the Manhattan School of Music, the Queen Sofia Spanish Institute and other important venues, by commissioning hundreds of original solo and chamber music works and concertos from some of the foremost contemporary composers, by donating thousands of dollars for scholarships, special artist's projects and guitar festivals, and by publishing Guitar Review magazine.


Development of the nylon guitar string

In the mid 1940s, Andres Segovia mentioned the shortage of good guitar strings in the United States, particularly his favorite Pirastro catgut strings, to a number of foreign diplomats at a party, including General Lindeman of the British Embassy. A month later, the General presented Segovia with some nylon strings which he had obtained via some members of the DuPont family. Segovia found that although the strings produced a clear sound, they had a faint metallic timbre which he hoped could be eliminated.

Nylon strings were first tried on stage by Olga Coelho in New York in January, 1944.

In 1946, Segovia and Augustine were introduced by their mutual friend Vladimir Bobri, editor of Guitar Review. On the basis of Segovia's interest and Augustine's past experiments, they decided to pursue the development of nylon strings. DuPont, skeptical of the idea, agreed to supply the nylon if Augustine would endeavor to develop and produce the actual strings. After three years of development, Augustine demonstrated a nylon first string whose quality impressed guitarists, including Segovia, in addition to DuPont.

Wound strings, however, were more problematic. Eventually, however, after experimenting with various types of metal and smoothing and polishing techniques, Augustine was also able to produce high quality nylon wound strings.

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