The Red Pistoys are strings inspired by the "Red Pistoys" celebrated by Thomas Mace as the best for lute basses, similar in type of twist to the Catlines of Bologna - that is, well made and smooth even without sanding - but above all characterized by a beautiful dark red colour, presumably due to the use of a pigment with a high specific weight, such as cinnabar or red lead.
Due to health regulations and the presumed toxicity of cinnabar, it was decided to adopt a compromise solution, using brass powder as weight and a non-toxic red pigment for coloring, for purely aesthetic purposes and only for lute strings.
It was Mimmo Peruffo who hypothesized that the low octaves of the sixteenth and eighteenth-century lutes, which present in the iconography a typical red color, were cords weighed down with cinnabar or minium (both pigments with a high specific weight), and that corresponded to the so-called Red Pistoys of Mace. The scholar has tried to prove his hypothesis by detecting presumably original bridges of ancient lutes, which have holes too thin for low strings in bare gut adequate.
We therefore cautiously share the hypothesis of Peruffo with respect to lutes, but we do not agree on the extension of the use of loaded basses on string instruments, in which only brown strings appear, which cannot be weighed down with cinnabar, but would seem simply be poorly sulphured cords, due to their thickness: after all, it is not clear why they should be weighed down with a different material.
Anyway, for bowed instruments, it is suggested to use the Copper loaded strings.