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

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#401
AndreasH said:
Oh no... Bob, don't do this me :rollno: I'm happy with my setup, I'm happy with my setup... :ninja:
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Take It Easy Andreas :D !! Remember .... Set-up is one thing (and I'm happy that you are happy) .... But Strings ..... Are a whole different animal ;) . Don't worry Friend .... IF AND WHEN .... I put them up for sale ... I will ignore and refuse to answer any PM that comes from you :hiding: . I will respect your current state of bass bliss and not lead you astray.
 
#403
Bob Knebel said:
Take It Easy Andreas :D !! Remember .... Set-up is one thing (and I'm happy that you are happy) .... But Strings ..... Are a whole different animal ;) . Don't worry Friend .... IF AND WHEN .... I put them up for sale ... I will ignore and refuse to answer any PM that comes from you :hiding: . I will respect your current state of bass bliss and not lead you astray.
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Thanks Bob, I appreciate it. :D ... ... Wait a minute... I need those pistoys!!! :eek:
 
#407
Hhhmmmm .... This is starting to look promising :D .... Two gut-nuts, Andreas and Nuno, from countries starting with "Sw" possibly fighting over some strings I might sell. I smell a big-time bidding war ;) .

Nuno ..... I am probably sitting good in the Silk Department for now .... Nice new Animas A & E on the Epi with nicely-used Garbos A & E in reserve. Now about that Swiss Moonshine .... a case of La Bleue Absinthe might win you the bid :bassist: .

What say you Andreas :D ?? Reasonable counter-offers will be considered.

Nuno A. said:
The Pistoy A is better than all other plain A's that i've tried (Efrano, Fisoma, LaBella, Lenzner and whatever no name brands that i collected over the years) but still is pretty muddy for jazz pizz in my opinion. i like the sound on the very 1st positions because its really a fat sound, but after the E you get in muddland. However if you slap a lot and dont go high on the fingerboard, this string will give you the fattest slap sound i have ever heard.
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I haven't tried any other plain A guts. I agree with the rest of your opinions. In my music I never go above E on the A string anyhow .... But it is one helluva E right there :D . I might end-up missing the fat sloppy Pistoy basterd .... that 3 plain gut / Garbo E combo on the Kay sure did amplify nicely. Oh Well ..... Time to move on.
 
#414
I use a pistoy G and D and should have some live recordings in a week or so that I can post of me playing them pizz and arco. I havn't noticed them to be unfocused at all. The D string gets hard to play with the bow in the very top of its register but no more so than Eudoxa's were on my bass. I compared some recordings I did last year with Spiro's to my pistoy/anima's string set and the bass sounds pretty damn similar out front but I know my hands really prefer my current set-up so I will leave it as is.
 
#415
calivox said:
...I love the sound of the Gamut wrapped A. I can play it up through in thumb position without any problems at all. I doubt I'd like an unwrapped A. Of course, the benefits of the unwrapped A are: no wrappings that are drastically affected by heat and humidity. ...mark
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Nuno A. said:
The Pistoy A is better than all other plain A's that i've tried (Efrano, Fisoma, LaBella, Lenzner and whatever no name brands that i collected over the years) but still is pretty muddy for jazz pizz in my opinion. i like the sound on the very 1st positions because its really a fat sound, but after the E you get in muddland.
However if you slap a lot and dont go high on the fingerboard, this string will give you the fattest slap sound i have ever heard ...Nuno
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chris dammann said:
I use a pistoy G and D and ... I havn't noticed them to be unfocused at all. The D string gets hard to play with the bow in the very top of its register but no more so than Eudoxa's were on my bass....
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Oh Yea Mark. I love that Gamut wrapped A & E sound. Almost as much as I do the unwrapped G & D sound... Like the D (which I at first thought was thunky), I now play the wrapped A up into the second octave with no problem either. It has a good sound up there. It's not like a Spiro, but its clear enough. And the tone, did I mention the tone... ?

Nuno -- thanks for yours. I guess muddland is where the old time gut players never went on the A string, preferring to venture up the neck on the G. But I want to try out the unwrapped A because of the great full warm sound I get out of the unwrapped D. I'm guessing it's going to sound like that except even fuller. I also am thinking the unwrapped A will stay in tune better than the wrapped. Larson doesn't make a Lyon unwrapped A as a standard string, only Pistoy, so I'll move over to Pistoys later in the year. Btw, has anyone tried an unwrapped A by Dlugolecki?

Chris, by "unfocused" I was meaning in comparison to the Lyons. Dan Larson told me the Pistoys are big on fundamental, even moreso than the Lyons. I guess I need to compare... Will post more when I get there.

Cheers
 
#416
Bob Knebel said:
Hhhmmmm .... This is starting to look promising :D .... Two gut-nuts, Andreas and Nuno, from countries starting with "Sw" possibly fighting over some strings I might sell. I smell a big-time bidding war ;) .

What say you Andreas :D ?? Reasonable counter-offers will be considered.
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Swedish moonshine is the best, everybody knows that :D I can throw in som Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam into the deal ;)
 
#417
AndreasH said:
Swedish moonshine is the best, everybody knows that :D I can throw in som Swedish meatballs and lingonberry jam into the deal ;)
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All Right :D .... The bidding war is heating up. Swedish moonshine AND meatballs and jam .... Way better than lutefisk and lefsa (I'm 1/4 Norwegian). There's lot of Swedish ancestry around where I live .... Some of them raise a lot of sheep. I'm surrounded by guts (estimated 67,000 sheep in surrounding counties) but I don't know how to make strings. We have about 1 million people in the state, about 1/4 million sheep, and about 1000 jokes involving sheep :p .
bonaventura said:
.... I want to try out the unwrapped A because of the great full warm sound I get out of the unwrapped D. I'm guessing it's going to sound like that except even fuller. I also am thinking the unwrapped A will stay in tune better than the wrapped. Larson doesn't make a Lyon unwrapped A as a standard string, only Pistoy, so I'll move over to Pistoys later in the year. Btw, has anyone tried an unwrapped A by Dlugolecki? ....
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BV ..... In late 2007 when I was researching gut A & E, both Dan at Gamut and Damian Dlugolecki recommended against the wrapped guts for my dry climate and so I asked them about the plain unwrapped strings. Gamut Dan told me he had several players that really liked his plain A and that he could even make an E string (huge) but he told me he would only make those as Pistoys .... Something about maintaining string consistency, fundamental, and full sound. I'm guessing that when you get to big plain A & E strings, the triple-gut-stranding and high-twistiness is a good way to maintain consistency, elasticity, and sounds that sort of resemble musical notes. But what do I know ;) .... Dan at Gamut is the expert.

Anyhow ... In an e-mail from DD, Damian told me ... "I only have one A1 (plain) in stock .... And I don't think you would find it agreeable to play." I never followed up with him on why it would might be dis-agreeable. When I saw Jason Sypher put a Gamut Pistoy plain A up for sale here at TB, I bought it and found it to be a fine string ... even though I am going to change strings on the Kay and give the A some rest for awhile.
 
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