Thomastik Plastik?

**Matthew Tucker** · #1 06-23-2003, 06:59 AM

For what purpose is the little black plastic sleeve on the Thomastik D-string, ball-end????

curious ...

**Francois Blais** · #2 06-23-2003, 08:07 AM

Tone filter. (goes over the bridge)
You can leave it alone...

**Matthew Tucker** · #3 06-23-2003, 07:38 PM

Tone Filter??

Please explain!

**Francois Blais** · #4 06-24-2003, 09:14 AM

To smooth out the tone a bit.
Possibly more effective with arco playing...
Try it with pizz playing, you probably won't notice any difference.

**Matthew Tucker** · #5 06-24-2003, 09:25 PM

Hmmm, goes on the bridge eh? Its sitting on the ridge of the tailpiece now. I'll move it up and see if I can tell any difference, just out of curiosity ...

arnoldschnitzer · #6 07-06-2003, 08:13 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Matthew Tucker
For what purpose is the little black plastic sleeve on the Thomastik D-string, ball-end????

curious ...

I believe it actually goes way back to the introduction of steel strings. The D is way thinner than an unwrapped gut D, and the sleeve allows the player to keep the bridge, and have the D string at a reasonable height. If this is correct, you'd think they could discontinue the practice by now! I don't understand why they would use a "tone filter" only on the D string...?

**Matthew Tucker** · #7 07-06-2003, 08:03 PM

That makes more sense. Some of the older basses I've seen have nut grooves cut more like wide V's than grooves and I figured that was either bad setup or for much wider strings. I've never seen gut strings mind, and I always wondered why all the pix in the Ray Brown Method book like he's using four E's ...

Thomguy · #8 07-08-2003, 08:47 AM

"I believe it actually goes way back to the introduction of steel strings. The D is way thinner than an unwrapped gut D, and the sleeve allows the player to keep the bridge, and have the D string at a reasonable height. If this is correct, you'd think they could discontinue the practice by now! I don't understand why they would use a "tone filter" only on the D string...?"

Astute obsevation! 9 out of 10 times, a gut string will be thicker than a steel string to get the tone. With the introduction of steel strings, T-I put a sleeve on them since they knew the bridge slot was cut deeper like Matthew said; a deep V. It's purpose is enable installation of a thinner string on a bridge cut in this manner and allow a player to go back & forth between gut & steel as they see fit without adding another bridge each time!

If you never use gut and don't need the sleeve, slip it to the back of the bridge and forget about it. Of course, if you want it to act as a "tone filter" slip the sleeve over to the other side of the bridge ;-)