Low tension Metal string Choice jazz pizzicato

[bonaventura]

Originally Posted by Uncletoad

I think everybody that is primarily a pizz player should spend 6 months to a year on Spirocores. Especially if you are a Jazz player.

After that have fun and join everyone else in string hell.

The spirocore is the benchmark for pizz playing. Learn how to play with Weichs or Mittels. That way you have something to compare to.

You cannot avoid the pain of growth as a player by using light strings. If anything you'll just slow down the progress.

Originally Posted by rdwhit

+1 , best advise yet

O yea verily. Listen to the Toad. Spirocores are a standard, a benchmark. The weichs are, well, soft. Your fingers need to get tough. The thinner Corellis bow better, but Spirocores have a fuller sound. You've had your bass one month, Jimminy. I know a professional bassist who left Spirocores on for 10 years and liked 'em more and more...

[jsbarber]

Originally Posted by malpasso

...
Unfortunately there's no information about the Corelli 380 string tension. ...

Malpasso - you are using the term tension incorrectly. What you are describing is the stiffness of the string, not the tension. The tension is the amount of force being transfered down the string. The stiffness has to do with how it responds when you pluck it. Tension is determined by:
the open note fundamental frequency; the mass/length of the tuned string ; the string length - nut to bridge.

Stiffness has to do with the elasticity of the string. Not the same thing. (You are not alone though, many people on this forum make the same mistake.) When you pluck the string you displace it from it's straight line shape, nut-bridge. And since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line plucking it corresponds to stretching it.

So, even if they did publish the string tensions, it would not give you what you are looking for. To my knowledge, no one publishes stiffness data, and I'm not even sure if a measurement has been defined.

As I see it, tension is relevant because it loads up your bass with forces:
- forces on the tuning pegs down through the neck
- forces on the nut as the strings bend through it
- forces on the bridge down into the top-plate, soundpost and bassbar
- forces on the body of the bass where the tailpiece wire round the corner
- forces on the endpin fitting where the tailpiece wire loops
This loads up the instrument, and some seem to respond better with more and some with less tension. (It seems like the downward force from the bridge would be most critical, but that is speculation.) So tension is relevant to the sound of your instrument. But it is not the property of the string that determines how stiff it feels when you pluck the string. The term for that is stiffness, or so I'm told by our resident string guru Francois.

Jim

[malpasso]

Thanks once again for all your ideas.
a few things, I'd like to point out.

• Stiffness/tension: I see your point, Jsbarber. if I use that term it is because it is the one usually handled when this topic comes into discussion. It seems rasonable that a string that needs 25 kgr. to get the desired pitch should take less effort to be bent against the fingerboard than one that takes just 20 kgr for the same thing

• Technique and exercise: This is something I take for granted. Of course I think that's a stage I cannot -nor I want to- avoid. I've stated myself that I had already noticed a great progress as regards finger strength, just after one month's practise!.

• Setup or string choice first?: You all seem to agree that Spiro Weichs are already low tension (sorry again, Jsbarber, he, he) strings; suitable enough to start with. It won't be me who swims agaist the tide.

• Something weird: Some people -not in this thread- seem to ne against low tension strings -like Corelli 370ms- because they are too thin, They mention the G string in particular. Still they keep on defending Weichs when their G string is just as thin (0.046")!!!!!

In conclusion. I thing I'll ask my luthier to setup my bass to the existing Weichs. I'll save myself some money and will turn to study and practise as a method to improve my hand strength.
Thanks again

[TroyK]

Good decision. Come back to it in a year or two.

Originally Posted by malpasso

Something weird: Some people -not in this thread- seem to ne against low tension strings -like Corelli 370ms- because they are too thin, They mention the G string in particular. Still they keep on defending Weichs when their G string is just as thin (0.046")!!!

True that. Every major string has a cult built around it and weiches are no exception.

Some basses work better with less tension on the table and some work better with more. Some people prefer one or the other for various reasons.

And, tension is not the only things that makes strings what they are. The materials, the windings, construction of the core and some secret juju are all factors, not to mention the bass and the player. So, if you read the forums, you will find what appear to be inconsistencies and even outright conflicts.

The way to sort through it:

Try enough strings for long enough that you have an opinion about them to your ear, your hands, your bass. Then when you read what someone else has written about them you have a context for it. Read posts by the same people for years, spend a fortune and many sleepless nights experimenting and comparing other's opinions to your own experience and then decide which posters seem to be most and least like you and listen more to them. Go meet some of these guys if you're in the same town or when you travel. Hear them play, play their bass if you can, hang with them, then come back and read their posts. It all starts to seem different.

OR, just go the way you're going. Try not to think about strings for as long as possible. Some number of years out, you'll either be one of the afflicted (Like me) or one of those beautiful cats who hasn't changed his strings in years and can never remember what kind they are when put on the spot, but plays great.

[Uncletoad]

Originally Posted by TroyK

The way to sort through it:

Try enough strings for long enough that you have an opinion about them to your ear, your hands, your bass. Then when you read what someone else has written about them you have a context for it. Read posts by the same people for years, spend a fortune and many sleepless nights experimenting and comparing other's opinions to your own experience and then decide which posters seem to be most and least like you and listen more to them. Go meet some of these guys if you're in the same town or when you travel. Hear them play, play their bass if you can, hang with them, then come back and read their posts. It all starts to seem different.

OR, just go the way you're going. Try not to think about strings for as long as possible. Some number of years out, you'll either be one of the afflicted (Like me) or one of those beautiful cats who hasn't changed his strings in years and can never remember what kind they are when put on the spot, but plays great.

And this post should close out this thread.

I wish I had played spirocores for so long that I just didn't want to know anything else.

I could have practiced more, bought a better car, remodeled my kitchen, spent more time with my wife.....

Arnold Schnitzer warned me about this again when I bought his bass.

I ignored him and now I'm fu.....

[jsbarber]

Originally Posted by malpasso

Thanks once again for all your ideas.
a few things, I'd like to point out.

• Stiffness/tension: I see your point, Jsbarber. if I use that term it is because it is the one usually handled when this topic comes into discussion. It seems rasonable that a string that needs 25 kgr. to get the desired pitch should take less effort to be bent against the fingerboard than one that takes just 20 kgr for the same thing

So, let me ask you this: which string do you find to be "higher tension", the Pirastro Obligato or the Spirocore Weich? My experience tells me the Weich, but the tension data tells me the Obligato.

http://jordankirkness.tripod.com/dbstringtension.html

If the construction/design of the strings is different your intuition can lead you astray.

Originally Posted by malpasso

• Setup or string choice first?: You all seem to agree that Spiro Weichs are already low tension (sorry again, Jsbarber, he, he) strings; suitable enough to start with. It won't be me who swims agaist the tide.

No need to apologize. I just see people get confused about this, and it is because we are careless with, (and in some cases ignorant of), the proper terminology.

Jim

[TroyK]

I know you're not asking me and I don't know the answer, but that doesn't really prevent me from opening my yap anyway. Such is the internet.

Tension is something that can be measured and we all have metrics on it (metrics is about the least hip thing I could have brought into a discussion about playng Jazz, by the way). Suppleness is not, to my knowledge, something that we have a measurement for, so it's subjective. Not saying it couldn't be measured, but it probably can, but I've never seen that chart and don't think that it exists. It is real. Flexicores are nice and supple, but their tension specs don't suggest that they will feel that way.

So, I guess it comes back to; what are you trying to engineer for your bass? Tension on the table because of it's structural nature? Feel to your fingers? Sound? The first is really the only one that I think you might get to scientifically, assuming, of course that you've figured out what the proper tension for your table is.

Obligatos and Weichs are made with different materials and feel and behave differently.


Troy

[jsbarber]

Feel free to interject, that is what this forum is about. I think that the characteristic that people refer to when they are talking about stiffness or suppleness has to do with how elastic the string is. [I mean the strings bend pretty easily when they are not under tension, so it's not flexibility IMO.] Elasticity could easily be measured by picking a standard string length (41.5" or whatever) for a 3/4 and measuring the force required to displace the middle of the string by a fixed amount, say 1". If you made the same measure for all 3/4 size bass strings you could compare the "stiffness". This is not to say that tension is not important, that is still a useful characteristic of the string. But it would provide a real measure of what people often are trying to get at when they misuse the term tension when discussing how playable a string is.

If all strings were of the same basic design, with the same materials, then tension could probably be used to describe both properties. But with differing designs and differing materials, it is misleading to use it for both purposes.

Jim

[TroyK]

Yep. I agree.