Beginning jazz bassist. Saw a jazz bass online with gut strings. For those of you who use gut strings, do they tune to the standard A=440? Or do they tune lower? Thanks for the help.
Thanks. Just making sure. As someone who has more than a few years in classical and orchestral playing, I know from experience most stringed instruments with gut strings are tuned to 415 as they are often 'baroque'. However, I expected the jazz community would be different. Thanks for the input.
Whatever music and people you`re playing with. Guts are associated with early music and lesser than norm 440 - 443 Hz tuning and that`s why some manufacturers have very hard time showing tension fiqures / gauges that make any sense. My wild quess goes that there are great number of bass players who are pretty confused with the parameters that top of the line string manufacturers present, beeing that the original manufacturer based the business on delivering strings for perioid instruments. If you need your guts for anything else, like a great pizz tone like on the Record, or to be heard acoustically in a mix, just forget about those parameters and ask for contemporary variables of roots and jazz music, pizz playing. I have a Pistoy light plain A under no-name gut DG with reasonably high action on my bass and it`s going strong at 440 or 442 tuning, I play dominantly pizzicato. With that said, you can`t get that arco tone and feel any other way.
Thanks for the help. I was planning on playing mostly pizzicato, but I might sneak a bit of bow in there once and a while.