Felt rings with my Pirastro Olivs and Garbo problems.

[MarkH]

Hi There,

I've just recieved my mail order Oliv G&D strings after recurring problems with rattling Velvet Garbos.

Can anyone tell me what the felt rings are for...?

There seem to be two on each string.... I can only assume they must be used at the nut and the bridge somehow.

The Garbos sound great, but two different D strings have started to develop a strange rattle after a couple of months of regular gigging.

Has anyone else come across this?

Thanks,

Mark H.

[Monte]

Originally posted by MarkH
Hi There,

I've just recieved my mail order Oliv G&D strings after recurring problems with rattling Velvet Garbos.

Can anyone tell me what the felt rings are for...?

There seem to be two on each string.... I can only assume they must be used at the nut and the bridge somehow.

They are to be used on the ball end where it goes through the tailpiece. Some use them, some don't.

The Garbos sound great, but two different D strings have started to develop a strange rattle after a couple of months of regular gigging.

Has anyone else come across this?

Thanks,

Mark H.

I would guess that you have windings coming apart somewhere. Given that it is always the D, I would make sure you don't have a rough spot on your bridge, nut, or tuning peg that is causing excessive wear.

Are you using graphite in your nut and bridge slots? Sometimes the string will "stick" in the slots when tuning, and since Garbos stretch a bunch it can lead to excessive wear.

Monte

[MarkH]

Thanks Monte,

Yeah, there seems to be about 3 points where the winding seems to be disrupted and they're both around the bridge and nut areas...

I have a great luthier and I've checked the nut and the bridge, they seem pretty smooth at the point of contact.
I’ve always put graphite on when changing strings and never had this problem before with spiros, innovation etc etc.

I don’t use the A & E strings so I don’t know whether this is a problem with all the strings (the G string doesn’t seem to be wound), but I know a guy who had trouble with his A string.

These strings are the best strings I ever played and they record beautifully, but if it is the string and not the bass that’s the problem, it’s going to make using them pretty difficult.

I actually endorse (or ‘believe in’, as it says on the website) the Velvets and wrote them a strong letter as I had to change the string in the middle of a studio session yesterday and wasn’t very happy about it.

Could it be that just regular hard playing is causing this and that it’s par for the course.
I’m a bit confused as to whether I should just forget about using the D string and stick with my new Oliv D, which is nice but not really balanced with the Garbo G…..

Cheers,

Mark H.

[MarkH]

'Just to say that following my letter to Velvet they stuck a new D string in the post immediately, with apologies etc..

Let’s hope this one works out.

Full credit to them for being so gracious and quick though.

If any one else has had a similar experience with these strings I’d be really interested to know.

All the best,

Mark.