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Double Bass GUTS ARE SO MUCH FUN!!!
- Thread starter Marc Piane
- Start date
After not having a (to me) unevenly heavy/tight G string to cope with, overall string height has gone up a mm or two (by choice). Closer to the height where gut gives you this ocean of deep tone to work with...
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One of the hidden secrets of the NYC bass life is the David Gage clearence bin of loose strings. At one point about five years ago they had what what must have been a case (10+) of the red dyed Nu-Tone D strings in various gauges for $20 a peice. I bought a heavy gauge one, and it reminded me of every other non-pistoy plain gut D I’ve tried. It was very very varnished, and bet it would have been very durable had I stuck with it. The red was quite a conversation starter, too!
Just threw on some guts because I got off tour and didn't have any dead spiros around. Very, very interesting. It's been years since I've strung up some guts so no one that I currently play with has ever heard me play them and the response was quite markedly positive. They bow horribly, you have to play soooo lightly with an increased bow-speed to get anything out of them. But, since I've only got a few weeks until Im back on tour I decided to challenge myself with them for the duration of this break. Interesting.
Jason Playing guts!? But he started the spiro thread...has a world gone mad?!
Ear Trumpet has been great. Some FOH engineers won't mix it in with my signal due to bleed but, for smaller acoustic venues I think it's excellent. I have a AMT as well, which has served me well but I like the fact that I can leave the ETL on the bass and forget it. Fantastic company. Highly recommended.
The world will have gone mad if I had an E and A gut. Still have spiros on my American Standard and they sound great. Spiros are more pointed, more clear. The other night I kept thinking the band was starting a tune in E instead of F. That's because a half step can be blurred in a noisy atmosphere with guts....
Look, I'll never get over Charlie Haden, Wilbur Ware, Mingus, Blanton, even Gary Peacock on guts. It's an amazing sound. But I'm a freak about the bow, bow 99% of the time I'm at home. There's just no way to play these guts in the higher positions, the way I like to play. That means that one bass has to have spiros or even solos at all times for me to be a happy guy around the house. I think it's important to stay engaged, stay interested, stay open. This little gut foray has reminded me of so many things I'd forgotten. It's been nice. Let's see what happens.
Jasdon, why not leave Spiros on the Italian, which is almost certainly more rewarding to bow, and put gut D&G on the American Standard? To me, half the point of owning and maintaining several instruments is having the latitude to set them up for different purposes.
Back to plain gut ADG, but now a little wiser to not mess my right hand anymore. Put them on last week and played acoustically a improvised gig on saturday with reeds and electronics. Didn`t work well enough as my bass was set for guts on top of Spiro weichs. Did a new setup yesterday and today. Reqular Chorda G set to 8,5mm`s, Evah slap gut D at 11,5mm`s , Lenzner supersolo A at 13mm`s and a Evah weich E at 11mm`s.
Fat low twist rate guts worked really well with Spiro weichs, very ballsy and loud pizz, but bowing was a real challenge. This was the first reason for the change, arco is now really nice and even across the strings. Great bouncy pizz feel and notes pop out everywhere on the fingerboard. Nice dark old school tone, with this gut complexity I love!!!
Drummerless rehearsals tomorrow, can`t wait to lay my hands on the doghouse!
Fat low twist rate guts worked really well with Spiro weichs, very ballsy and loud pizz, but bowing was a real challenge. This was the first reason for the change, arco is now really nice and even across the strings. Great bouncy pizz feel and notes pop out everywhere on the fingerboard. Nice dark old school tone, with this gut complexity I love!!!
Drummerless rehearsals tomorrow, can`t wait to lay my hands on the doghouse!
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Progris report: On the saturdays gig with my ex-setup and " new " strings it became very apparent that I need fatter low twist strings, cojones for the D and A. After some twinkling the setup goes: Req Chorda G @ 8,5mm, ghetto Pirastro D ( unwound nylon w Pizzicato ), 3-ish mm gauge @11,5 -ish mm`s, Efrano medium 3,7mm gauge @ 13mm´s, Evah weich E @ 11mm`s. Loud, dark, ballsy, bows like a dream.
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So the chorda G, your pirastro "ghetto D", and Efrano A, are all low twist strings? What's wrong with the Chorda D & A?
End of progris report: Took the plain A away and put a Evah slap on, in the middle of outside rehearsals. I have no time to rebuild my pizz technique at this point. Arco was fantastic but playing the plain A pizz messed my time feel completely, and there`s lots of that stuff going on at the moment. Good stuff is that my bass sounds and plays very balanced with these strings and the bridge arch I made for plain A setup, both pizz and arco. Chorda G is at 8+ mm`s, ghetto Pirastro D at 11,5 -ish mm`s, Evah slap A at 13 mm`s and Evah weich E at 11 mm`s. Dark and loud old school tone.
I recently spoke to very highly respected luthiers. One said my plain gut g-string will eat up the fingerboard faster than a wound string because the hairs act like sandpaper and will chew it up. The other said no. The The reason I am asking is because after over a year of heavy use I put back a wound G string and there is a ton of buzzing. I noticed it with the gut string but was not sure if it was imperfections in the string or the fingerboard. Apparently it's the fingerboard. Do plain gut eat up the fingerboard faster than a steel wound string like a spirocore or something?
