Howdy

I play a 40's era Kay upright. At least I try to play it. The action is incredibly high and the strings are very unforgiving. Actually, I'm an electric player who wants to play upright. My question(s) is...has anyone out there tried Velvet Garbos? If so, what do you think of them? If you live in the U.S., where did you purchase them? How close to the $450.00us retail price did you pay for them? Would you recomend a different brand/maker for playing a percussive/slap style of bass? I'm a novice on a limited budget. I welcome any and all advice.

Hammond Ashley out in Seattle (http://www.bassviolins.com) sells the Velvets for about $350 a set (this is from memory).

For slapping, I used to use Spirocore E and A (steel) and Golden Spiral (gut wrapped in nylon) D and G, this is about $150 for all four strings. Cheapest all gut set I know of is the LaBella set, about $200.

I buy all my strings online because no local dealers will give the 50% discounts that the mail order vendors offer.

High action is easy to deal with, lower the bridge, replane the fingerboard if you need to and you're done. A good repairman should be able to do this for under $100. Keep in mind for slapping you'll want higher action than if you're trying to play like Ron Carter.

For all their breathless advertising, I've yet to find anyone who uses Velvets. They are much too expensive to buy as an experiment. In addition, I'm told they're difficult to bow. There are lots of slap players around who can advise you. I'm not one of them. But I know there's better ways to spend $450. I'd spend the money on a proper bridge. I see no reason to plane the fingerboard unless it's worn down unevenly. Your bridge may be salvageable, but that's not usually the case. Check the Lemur website for string prices. They're among the best on prices generally.
http://www.lemur-music.com/index.html

A followup.

I finally bought some Garbos late last year (2000) after playing someone's bass with the cheaper Velvet 180 strings (synthetic gut). I contacted the US distributor who happens to be here in Mass. and ordered a set (diff in price from the 180s was only about $50 so I bit). When they arrived, I put on the E string, tuned it to pitch and started playing. Within 20 seconds the string snapped! Talk about bummed....a $100 string busted in 20 seconds, that's a mere $18,000 an hour to use them :eek:

I called the distributor and got a brand new set shipped out, no questions asked. He told me they had seen some breakage problems and the new set would be a new formulation. I put these on and have been playing them for about three months, just started gigging with them a few weeks ago.

The bowing is really quite good EXCEPT on the G which is awful; the windings above the gut on the G is different than the other three strings for some reason. I'm not a great arco player anyway, but I can say that the E, A and D are much better to bow on than Spirocores if not as nice as Helicores.

As far as the sound, well it's really sweet. Not at all "thumpy" like other gut I've used, warmer than steel but admittedly less sustain than common jazz strings like Spirocore or Helicore. For slapping they are astounding, having all four strings gut works a lot better than my old mixed setup of Spirocore E and A and Golden Spiral D and G. Tuning stability is better than the Golden Spirals. I amplify with a K&K Bass Max pickup through a Fishman Pro-EQ preamp and get a nice amplified tone with these strings.

The real question is how long will they last. If I can get two years or more out of them, they'll have been worth it for me. Your mileage may vary.

I've been using the 360's for 9 months. Yes Don, they are difficult to bow, but so are gut and I can get by using less tension on the hair and using cello rosin. For jazz pizz, they are wonderful after a few weeks for your bass to adjust to them. As far as others using them, Larry Grenadier was using them when I last saw him. I tried the Garbo's on a bass in Austin, but for me they weren't worth the extra bread. Velvet lowered their prices recently also. I haven't felt I needed to change my first set yet, and I've got another set I bought for cheaper from a guy who didn't like dealing with black fingers when I need to change.

Monte

Thanks for the info--I've been looking at the web site, very seductive. Hey, there's been a miracle breakthru. sounds like they are good, but not all that