livespan of gut strings

[dgelting]

I know that this may have been touched on somewhere else, but after a half hour of searching through the HUGE amount of posts about gut strings, I figured I'd start a new thread.

I just picked up an old Kay bass that was strung up with gut strings. I play a bunch of 30's and 40's pop and jive music (think Slam Stewart - I bow all of my solos), and I was happy that I'd finally be able to try out a set of guts after wanting to for so long. And a cheap bass like this would be great to use exclusively for these gigs - no worrys about taking my nice bass out into the Wisconsin winters into hot, dry taverns with lots of drunk people.

It is quite possible that these were the original strings (the bass was very neglected) - making them possibly 50 years old. They sounded very dead and inarticulate plucked and bowed. I was very dissapointed. I have a variety of mismatched steels on it right now to get me going. I'm working on figuring out what I'll end up with on it.

I'm cool with the nasely bowed sound and the short sustain - that's what I want - but these just did not sound good.

How often do you gut guys change your strings? I am of the opinion that the longer I have a steel set on my other 2 basses, the better. I like the tone to be "worn in", but if that is the "worn in" sound of gut, count me out.

Any suggestions for strings other than gut for that great Slam Stewart sound (probably not, but what the heck)?

My other bass - a nice carved instrument - has Velvet Compass 180 on the top three and an old D'Addario Pizz on the E. This set up keeps sounding better with age (about 1.5 years so far).
This happened because the Velvet E broke (the company was kind enough to send me a new one - good customer service!) and in a pinch I had to put something on. Turns out that the extra volume of the D'Addario perfectly compensated for the natural quiet E string volume of this particular bass. And the E was so dead that it blends in very well. Happy accident. Maybe I'll try to sell the Compass E string on the classifieds.

Thanks -

[robobass]

I used to use Eudoxa for everything, Orchestra, jazz, and folk stuff, where I played a lot of bowed solos. I could usually get about two years out of them. Now I have switched to Obligato. The Ob's aren't quite as rich and flexible in the lower register as Eud's, but they are a lot smoother under the bow in the high register. Lifespan is about the same, maybe a little longer. But they are a lot cheaper!
Robobass