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Double Bass GUTS ARE SO MUCH FUN!!!

#623
Thanks guys. What prompted me to post that was Marcus' comment about the singing quality, almost voicelike, of Gamuts. It's a different kind of singing than you get from steels too. To me there is a certain purity of tone that Mark was eluding to that I'm really digging. No buzzy overtones, just the note.

Pack on top of that the hump factor and we're looking at an extremely versatile string.

ps It's all Perna's fault.
 
#628
jfv said:
AMEN, I actually like them much more than the Anima A and
E I had on :)
Click to expand...

I did too until Winter when the Gamuts refused to stay in tune. It's insidious how it worked. I put them on in the summer. And they were heaven and I was addicted. They'd go a little flat in the heat but I'd crank 'em up, putting more tension on the top plate and making the bass sound even better Then Winter rolled around they started going sharp. REALLY sharp. Couldn't control them, C on the A string was in a different place every time I went for it, sharp. Unusably sharp. Had to detune until the bass sounded like a wash tub sharp. The Animas sound good (maybe not AS good but still very good and reasonably close to the Gamuts--the only thing closer I've found were Garbos) and they are VERY reliable. They stay in tune almost like Spiros (without the tension and mwah). I still have Gamut E/A on my '74 to remind me what it was like but I don't play that bass very much.

mark
 
#629
MT Spaces said:
Good Stuff George ;) . I live in Montana USA and our state just finished hosting a 3-year stint of The National Folk Festival .... Now it is onto Nashville TN ... The National Folk Festival - Nashville, TN September 2-4, 2011 . Nashvegas seems to get everything ... Sooner or later. Before you know it .... Toby Keith, Diercks Bentley, and Carrie Underwood will be playing watered-down Django Reinhardt gypsy-jazz music and calling it "Country" :D .

Our Montana 3-year "acquisition" of the NFF in Butte USA was Huge for our State :D . I saw so-many wonderful bands and a lot of good upright bass players playing gut strings ;) .

Our state is continuing The Festival into 2011 and Beyond .... A Montana Music & Arts Festival. The Montana Folk Festival in Butte, Montana July 8-10, 2011. FREE ADMISSION. - HOME .

Please sign-up your Romanian folk-band "stuff" and come and visit sometime. We love "ethnic" music. Butte USA is a melting-pot of folks and music.

"They" (serbs, croats, micks, hunkys, finlanders, italians, germans, welsh, chinese ... others too-numerous to mention ... I am one of those) .... They all came over 100 years ago to escape European poverty only to step into a big-pile of copper mining corporate and health-endangering Crap ... The Richest Hill On Earth ..... Butte, Montana - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia :rollno: !
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Good info - I did not know that about Montana! The band in the video is not my band - that's Taraf de Haidouks from Clejani, Romania :) But I only recently found out that their bass player (Vlad Viorel) uses a 3-stringer also. Kinda unique. He learned to play bass by playing along with a record player set at higher speeds.

George
 
#630
George700DL said:
Good info - I did not know that about Montana! The band in the video is not my band - that's Taraf de Haidouks from Clejani, Romania :) But I only recently found out that their bass player (Vlad Viorel) uses a 3-stringer also. Kinda unique. He learned to play bass by playing along with a record player set at higher speeds.

George
Click to expand...

Viorel Vlad is one of my all time Fave bass players...insane and very original, and only 3 strings! Which is one more than I really use :)
 
#631
This thread is so seductive...

Most basses I have tried with guts had the strings set so high it kind of took the fun out of thumb position.

I can tell, from reading this, that I have just been exposed to the wrong crowd.

Tell me, please; how low can you go, without the strings slapping the board when you bow?
 
#633
I never raised my adjusters when I switched.... they're at the same height as when I used Spiros, Animas, Olivs, and Evahs. About 7-11mm I'd guess. I don't really bury the strings in the board very often, unless I've had a double espresso or something. No more than the other strings I've had on the bass.
 
#637
First thing I did when I got them was jack them up sky high beyond any string I've ever had. Made playing harder. Then as an experiment, I lowered them down to the lowest possible height and found that the sound improvement was marginal. Prolly cuz the strings have no core. It's a little louder higher up but not that much or not enough to make it worth it. Even with the gamuts down low it's still pretty damn loud. Makes me wonder if you can only pull this sort of thing off with Gamuts and no other string.

Less effort + good sound = win

As an aside, I have a feeling that there are gut users here who are trying to replicate the sound of old (Mingus, PC, et. al). To do that yes, it's probably better to have your strings up high and dig in hard. And then there's a small minority who are looking for something else and not trying to recreate the old school sound. I'm in this minority and by no means am I trying to sound like an oldschooler one bit. It's not what I'm hearing in my head. The only thing I'm trying to draw from the oldschoolers is note choices, good time, and melodicism (each I can use a healthy dose of).

I'm not a big fan of PC's sound. Cue the pitchforks and torches.
 
#639
I find there is a pretty big difference in sound from high to low string height on my bass. A mm or 2 is the difference between LaFaro-like and PC-like. I keep mine around 7 mm for the G which I think of as pretty low. I've had it up where I can put my hand under the string.

I don't have trouble pushing the string down when it's up high but my timing gets thrown off. It takes me a while to get used to it. Down around 7 mm on the G, I get a fairly defined tone with big "thup" at the front of the note and it's very comfortable to play.

I'm actually a little lower than 7 mm right now. When the weather got hot and humid a week ago, the bass swelled and the string height went up on it's own. i lowered it a little to compensate. The weather has gotten cooler and drier, the bass shrank back down and now everything is a little too low. I didn't raise the strings again because, on my bass, the bass takes a day or so to settle down every time I do any kind of bridge adjustment. I figure the temp and humidity are going to go back up again in a few days and so will the string height. it's still very playable and still sounds really good. It's a bit hard to dig in on it though.

mark
 

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