An intersting listen

[musicman5string]

Hey-
By now alot of you have heard me mention Jim Hall's cd "with basses" featuring duos with Dave Holland, Christian McBride, Charlie Haden, George Mraz, and Scott Colley. Besides the playing, the differences in tones among the bassists is quite interesting.
Which brings me to this point:
Dave Holland and Scott Colley both use Thomastik Spirocore Orchestra gauge strings. Check out the difference in their tones:
Dave Holland: warm, clear, rich, definite attack to each note, sustain, moving air, plus Dave's attack can go from playing fairly lightly to really digging in.
Scott Colley: similar qualities, BUT, imo Scott's tone is "smaller" than Dave's, not moving as much air, a different kind of richness, clear but not as "pointed" as Dave's sound, Scott has less dynamic variety in his playing (on this recording anyway).
Now, reading that back it sounds like I'm slagging Scott Colley, which is not the case at all; I love Scott's playing, tone, ideas, his beautiful legato phrasing; it's just how I hear it on this particular comparison.
So I guess my point is same strings, same studio, same setting, same mic (probably); different tones.

[musicman5string]

and obviously, different players, different basses, different touches.
Same strings though.

[Jeff Guevin]

Thanks for sharing this! I love both of these players' tones, but wouldn't have guessed the same strings were on their basses. Scott Colley's playing on Portable Universe is my current favorite "sound", for style, musicality, and timbre.

Perhaps someone with good ears for recording can comment on possible differences in recording approaches?

[Jeremy Allen]

Are you sure Scott Colley uses a full set of mittels? He once sent an email to a TB member (later posted on the site) saying that, although he uses Spiro mittels for his E and A, he uses an Obligato on the D and a Flexocor on the G; he was careful to point out that this combination works for him on his bass but that it might not be so great on others.

I don't recall what strings he's had on when I've seen him live, and it's entirely possible that now he uses all mittels; but I wonder how we could tell which strings he was actually using on this recording? (Dave Holland makes it so easy for us--he's always just used Spiro mittels, and probably always will!)

[musicman5string]

Yeah, maybe he was using his combo set of strings on that recording; I don't know.
When I saw him live last month he had a full set of spiros on. I think that recording was from 2002 or 2003.