| Just tried some Clef guts on my student's bass; he put them on about a week ago. I'll try to post some thumbnail impressions from a few minutes of playing them on his older Eberle ply bass. As expected, he said he has been dealing with the initial stretching.
First impression... damn, they're big. If you like big-a$$ strings, you'll like these. Like the size of your leg big. Big, muttony goodness. They are old school gut strings. Unwrapped gut. The tension is very low, also no surprise. They feel pretty nice, a little rough maybe. I don't know if they would tear up my hands or not, coming from metal wraps. But they're not bad.
So I played a few walking lines, and again there were no surprises... nice big fat tones on the G and D, and even the A had nice clarity.... the E had that thunk that you would expect from unwound gut. My student thought there was no volume on the E until he heard me play it, and then he started hearing it from out front. He played the bass, and I advised him to trust that the sound was coming out, even though it wasn't what he was accustomed to. At that point, I loaned him an Anima E to try, just for fun.
So I tried some really uptempo walking, and came to the realization that I could do one-finger fast pizzing all night long on these. That's what they're built for, I think. It requires very little input to get them moving. Then I tried some soloing, and I was really surprised at the focus and clarity of these things. I even ventured way up into thumb position, and while they wouldn't be my first choice due to the diameter, they work pretty well up there. It was really easy to hit the center of the notes, much more so than the La Bella type strings. I also had to try some Milt-type slapping, which was fun to attempt. It sounded promising, as you would expect.
So I had to try the bow. I didn't apply any additional rosin from last night's gig, out of respect to my student's no-arco thing. Tried some long tones on each string. The top three had a really nice focus, and that breathy sound that plain gut gets. The E had that in even greater quantities. I would have to get used to the lower tension to bow guts of any kind... but it's definitely do-able.
I finally had to blow through the head to Tricotism, since it's on the plate for an upcoming CD. Pretty ****in' cool. Like a time machine.
I guess if I went gut, I'd have to go Gamut, DD, or something, just to get some stuff in the lower strings, and smaller gauges in the higher ones. But these are good for the price, about two bucks I think. Nice middle ground guts.
It got me thinking again about guts in general... that nice low tension thing. My hands aren't getting any younger.
Last edited by Marcus Johnson : 11-28-2007 at 04:12 PM.
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