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Double Bass Gut Strings: Are They Worth It To Try? (part I)

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#201
Kevin was nice enough to have me sit in on his bass last week when I was passing through New York. First of all great guy and great session he's going there.

Loved the sound and feel of the bass. I'm largely over string expimenting for sound, but I am still working to make sure that I can play without making my shoulder injury flare back up and set me back again. There is an ease and comfort with playing guys that really appeals to me. Yeah, as people have said, it limits or changes how you approach really technical passages, but steel can never be both meaty and supple at the same time, like gut can. I felt like I could just sit back and play that thing all night. I love that you can really dig in without either overpowering the string or having it dig into you like razorwire.

The sound was good too. The bassist in the band before was playing Spirocores and they closed with a Mingus tune. He had clearly spent some time transcribing Mingus and it occurred to me how close to that sound he was getting with Spriocores, but they still have a clarity that you don't get from gut or most any other steel string on the planet. You lose a bit of that with gut sonically, but Kevin was playing the sheet out of it and it was definitely working. I thought about calling Jake from New York about setting my bass up with guts (which wouldn't be the first time), but he would have just talked me out of it, which I probably needed anyway...so, back to work on my own bass with my own string with Kev's gut set up lingering in my memory like a beautiful woman you almost met at the bus stop once, but who's bus came while you were working up the courage to speak to her....

Damn, I'm poetic this morning.
 
#202
I've been following this thread for a while and thought someone said something about playing wrong with their fingers horizontal. When I was first starting out I had a couple people tell me to not use the horizontal technique even for fast alternating. I think a lot of young players think it's one or the other and the horizontal approach is wrong. Not true! It all depends on what you are doing.

I also prefer to pluck near the end of the board with all kinds of strings. With low tension strings it helps a lot when playing fast because the strings move around less down there and you can dig in a little more because there's more tension. The sound is a little more focused too.
 
#206
Progress Report.

Guts have settled in with the strings fully stretched out and sounding really good; punchy, fat with lots of thunk but not too thumpy. They are relatively stable for guts. Once I tune them up, they pretty much stay at pitch unless there is a sudden change of temperature. The bass sounds awesome with the guts. I hate that word but it is the only adjective I can come up with at the moment. All I want to do is play nowadays.

It's been about a month and I'm starting to get the hang of playing on guts. I haven't mastered all of the subtleties yet but I'm getting more and more comfortable and confident. Playing fast which was a technical nightmare at first is no problem now. It turns out there isn't any real trick to playing fast with guts; it is just a matter of getting the touch, which is different from that needed with steel strings, down. On Friday's gig, we played Oleo at 300 bpm and I had no trouble walking 20 choruses and then soloing for a couple. A month ago, I would have been crying or going into 2.

And the sound and punch has really opened a whole new world of soloing possibilities. While some doors have been closed off, others have opened and I'm starting to find them.

As far as amplification goes, I'm still pretty much using the Stat-B although I have an AMT on there too. Both sound equally good. Usually I use a Focus into an AI cab. On Friday, I brought out the Wizzy 10 which usually sounds a bit too mid-rangey. It still sounded mid-rangey but it kind of worked for me with guts by bringing out the mids in a fairly nice way. I'm going to work with it some more before making any grand pronouncements about it though. The gig was a low-medium volume gig and I had the amp just on loud enough to increase presence.

At a month in, I'm even more committed to the gut experience. I picked up my steel string bass the other day and it just sounded puny in comparison. I can't see going back to steel any time soon.

mark
 
#208
Marcus, you oughta give 'em a try. Call Dan Larson and buy a Gamut D and G (I'd suggest a medium G and a light D). Put them on with the Evah weich bottoms first (Garbos would probably be better but you already have the Evahs on there and they'll match well enough to get a sense of the guts). You'll need to do minimal nut and bridge slot adjustments with that combo. If you dig it, open your wallet and spring for the E and A. If you don't like it, put the Evahs back on and I'll buy your D and G for what you paid for them. No risk, buddy. No risk at all.

mark
 
#210
calivox said:
Marcus, you oughta give 'em a try. Call Dan Larson and buy a Gamut D and G (I'd suggest a medium G and a light D). Put them on with the Evah weich bottoms first (Garbos would probably be better but you already have the Evahs on there and they'll match well enough to get a sense of the guts). You'll need to do minimal nut and bridge slot adjustments with that combo. If you dig it, open your wallet and spring for the E and A. If you don't like it, put the Evahs back on and I'll buy your D and G for what you paid for them. No risk, buddy. No risk at all.

mark
Click to expand...

That's a great offer, thanks! I talked to Dan once and he invited me to check out the shop.

One thing that scares me off is the arco thing. But the main thing is that I'm really not doing any shopping for anything right now, just a $$$ thang.

I tend to be an all/nothing guy, so I'd probably just go nuts and get Gamuts all the way across. Like I said, I've played more pedestrian gut sets on crap basses and enjoyed it, so there's no telling what might happen if I put Gamuts on my bass. I had Olivs on it for a minute, and it was fantastic.
 
#211
I'm total crap at arco but I have an easier time bowing the Gamuts than I do bowing Mittels. The bow really grabs the strings and the bass sings amazingly well. There is a huge difference in sound between pizz and arco with guts. There is no trace of the "thunk" that characterizes the gut pizz attack.

I'm just saying.

Offer is still good.

mark
 
#213
I can't believe how nice the Dlugolecki plain guts are under the bow. It's a completely different experience from the one I had with plain Gamuts and Labellas. (Of course, I've been practicing a lot with the bow since then, so maybe that explains it.) They're just warm and lovely and huge sounding. I can't really do a lot of fancy stuff or tricky articulations with them, but this should be telling: I took my first ever public arco solo on Saturday (unplanned--it's not like I sit around practicing jazz with the bow), and it was on plain gut strings, and, well, the world didn't end. (It was nothing to write home about, believe me, but there were musicians in the audience and they all expressed pleasant surprise--like, "oh yeah, that's why those old guys would take bowed solos on fast tunes--you can actually hear what's going on that way.")

I love the guts. I can't wait to put the Spirocores back on. It's all true.
 
#215
You have to give them time and for you to adapt to the lesser tension. You have to watch out with the bow pressure. Don't push'em to hard. My varnished Gamut G was a dream under the bow. My Artones is a little bit harder but not really that hard! I changed to guts because of the bowability compared to Velvet Garbo D and G.
 
#217
Jeremy Allen said:
I contain multitudes, man.
All I'm saying is, I love playing bass! Whatever the strings are. And I learn something from whatever strings/setup are on the bass.
Click to expand...

I can dig it. Like a lot of you guys, I've played rentals and loaners on the road that represented the whole universe (gamut?) of the double bass world. Quite a few of them were strung with guts, now that I think of it. La Bellas mostly, I guess. There were a few that were a real challenge to play.... but given a few minutes to make friends with the individual instruments, I've done okay over the years.

That would be a good thread for those of us with some road time; Rental Basses I Have Known And Loathed. :D
 
#218
I've finally put together a Myspace page so I could upload some soundclips here.

I put up a bunch of recordings from past years (all original tunes of mine performed by some of the best musicians in Pittsburgh). All from my "steel period" with one tune on a fretless slab (it might be the last thing I ever recorded with slab). All of this stuff dates to about 2002. I'm really proud of these recordings; some really nice moments were captured.

In addition and more pertinent to this forum, I splooged together a 2 minute improvisation that I did with an H2 sitting about 2 feet out from the bass so the sound is not exactly studio quality; so pardon the fairly intense string noise. It's not intended to be very musical (and it's not); I wanted to demonstrate the facility I've developed with gut strings. A month ago, I wouldn't have been able to do anything like this. There wasn't any real technical breakthrough other than getting the touch down. I still have a ways to go but I'm getting there.

Link Removed

mark
 
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