I am fond of a particular early music consort of some prominence, and I have a stack of their CDs, along with CDs by a few of the individual members of the group doing their own things One of the women has a CD of folk songs and ballads, quite well done, I think, but I'm sure ethnic purists could find fault with it.   

About a year ago I had a chance to hear them live. During the intermission, rather than disappearing backstage, they came down and mingled with the audience.   I have two CDs of the lutenist in the group doing lute solos (danged good stuff!), and I had a chance to chat with him for a few minutes. I asked him about the strings he used on his lute:   did he use gut strings, or were they nylon?

"Nylon," he said. "I get some static sometimes from authenticity freaks, but the practicalities of the matter are that gut strings are so inconsistent and unreliable that if I tried to use them, we'd have to stop frequently for me to replace broken stings, and I would have to be constantly tuning. With nylon strings, I can play music instead of spending most of my time fussing with my instrument."

Works for me!

Don Firth