This might be bass dependent. With my bass playing arco, the D is the best sounding and most responsive of the 4 strings. Not wiry or metallic at all.
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Double Bass 2022 Spirocore Challenge
- Thread starter TroyK
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Here is a survey question that I'm sure has been beat to death over the years so please excuse me.
My playing is 99.9% pizz and I play in a country band. Spiro Mittles are the best sounding strings I have tried on my solid top Cristopher bass. My challenge is that by the third set I experience left hand fatigue big time.
The question is, what would I loose by moving to Weichs, or are there other good, easier playing choices given my admiration for the sound of mittles?
Thanks!
My playing is 99.9% pizz and I play in a country band. Spiro Mittles are the best sounding strings I have tried on my solid top Cristopher bass. My challenge is that by the third set I experience left hand fatigue big time.
The question is, what would I loose by moving to Weichs, or are there other good, easier playing choices given my admiration for the sound of mittles?
Thanks!
What you would lose or gain moving to weichs depends on your bass. It might get louder and more gooder or those things could drop off a bit. 3885 Weich would be a 1/2 step down and feel similar to your mittels (assuming they are S42). The S42 weich feel like a bigger jump to me.
What else? would be Pirastro Perpetuals. They have their own sound, but in the same general pallate, but have a round core and fight you less.
What else? would be Pirastro Perpetuals. They have their own sound, but in the same general pallate, but have a round core and fight you less.
I generally play just a short warm up as part of refreshing myself on the breaks on tunes that we haven't played in a while, or I want to improve on my standard bass lines.
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In my own experience I’ve found I need to practice at least an hour - or maybe two - for every hour I plan to perform on a given instrument (double bass obviously but also electric bass). Not only for hand stamina and body mechanics but also for callouses and overall connectedness. *AHCF* calls his process “calibration”.
I know drummers that keep a beat up kit in their cars all week and play gigs just fine with little to no warmups. Man I wish I could swing that!
In the context of this thread - especially with the well-known demand of a medium guage Spiro, I’d say spend some more quality time ahead of the gig in the woodshed. Good luck!
Well, I'm not a string expert, but my understanding is that a round core means a solid round core. This gives a stiff string, and I don't think it's been used much since the early days of steel DB strings, but it's not uncommon for cellos, violin, viola; also used for electric bass strings. There's also such a thing as a solid hexagonal core--I'm not aware of any DB strings that use this, but it's pretty common (probably the most common) core for electric bass strings. A rope core is a multi-stranded core. Here are some picks from D'Addario.
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Okay, I learned something today. I've been using "round" and "rope" interchangeably.
fwiw, there is a great graphic novel style history of Thomastik strings on their website. It explains the history of their journey of string development using steel and synthetic cores with a timeline. I think it’s a must read for any string nerd… which includes EVERYONE on this thread!
Thomastik-Infeld Vienna
Thomastik-Infeld Vienna
For the first time I could blame the gear for real.. So, I`ve been having this left arm problem during the summer. After a top off repair and a new fixed bridge in the beginning of the year I used weichs at first and moved on back to mittels with some minor bridge shaping. After the summer got here I`ve felt the action getting stiffer, but I didn`t measure the heights, never mind changing strings or shaping the bridge. I just thought that it`s nice that the bass makes a lot of noise as all gigs are outdoors and purely acoustic, and that I check out things with the action when the summer and the gigs are gone. Also, i´ve been having just as much of drumming duties as bass gigs, and I just thought that I`m a bit out of shape and the bass is swollen into a-bit-hard-to-play state. Last weekend the arm thing got worse and so I thought that I finally need to do something with both the arm and the bass. I finally measured the action on monday and the G was at 9mm`s! A couple of days of stretches, ibuprophen, bridge shaping and setting up, problem solved. It`s now 7 - 10mm`s with nicely worn in mittels, sounding and playing great!
I've been really happy lately that I'm using Spirocores. They feel good, they speak clearly, they project. It's great not to worry about strings.
Troy, I notice that we can still change our votes. Would it be preferred for people who have stopped using Spiros to change their votes from "I'm in!" to something else? That way (1) we can see how many people are still active, and (2) we can see if the challenge is nearly ended.
I don't seem to be able to add an option. If I could, it would work to have people who said they were in change to something like "didn't make it", but with existing options, I'm not so sure.
yeah that’s where I’m at too. I think even if I was playing 100% arco I’d stick with them now..,
Still in! At this point I've been running a set of 4/4 Red Mitchell Mittels for just over a year (after 14ish years playing on gut strings- Sonores, Gamut, Efrano etc). Getting lots out of these strings.
One question for you Spiro heads: Using @DoubleMIDI 's helpful tension calculator, I can see that the 3/4 weichs are pretty close tension-wise to the 4/4 mittel set on my bass. What isn't clear to me, however, is which set would be thicker gauge-wise?
One question for you Spiro heads: Using @DoubleMIDI 's helpful tension calculator, I can see that the 3/4 weichs are pretty close tension-wise to the 4/4 mittel set on my bass. What isn't clear to me, however, is which set would be thicker gauge-wise?
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