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Double Bass Passione med. vs Eva P. Weich. which has lower tension?

luisraulmunoz

luisraulmunoz

Oct 28, 2007
96
13
San Juan, Puerto Rico
#1
Hello, I currently have passione mediums on my bass, I would like to try evah pirazzi since I used them before on a different bass and loved them. Now this bass works better with lower tension strings, so my worry is whether the EP weichs will be more tense than the Passiones...
Unfortunately I dont have any EP weichs within my reach and they are expensive so I wonder if someone who has tried both on their instrument can give me an idea of how the tension aspect compares between these two.

I will never understand why Pirastro doesnt just do like thomastik and D'addario and post the strings tension measurements...

I play 99 percent arco classical. For the record, I like the passiones very much, they have a noble mellow, round sound, with decent volume, for solo they work very well I feel as if Im playing on solo strings almost which is nice for the solo part of an audition too...
But I just find myself wondering if the EP's can give me a bit more loudness/resonance and drama, in the 3rd string at least...which i find a bit soft for orchestral playing (excerpts etc.) The regular EP's are out of the question as I know they would be too tense for this bass.

I appreciate any insight you guys might provide. Thank you in advance.

Luis
 
#3
Hi thanks for the reply. I agree with your assessment, and certainly tension and stiffness are different aspects of a string's characteristics, however my concern is tension rather than stiffness, so a bit more stiffness is ok (even welcome) as long as I am not increasing the tension on the instrument's top. I just feel that this instrument resonates better with less tension, perhaps I should just try with the E and the A strings...since its where I would like to fatten up the sound a bit.
In the past I have experimented a lot with different tensions and used both EP regular and weich but on a different instrument that the one Im using now, on my french bass even the evah pirazzi weich feel rather stiff the regulars were just impossible on that bass, I gave them to a friend of mine and on his bass they didnt feel stiff at all, its amazing how this sort of thing changes from one instrument to another...


thanks,
 
#4
Hi Francois,

I wouldn't say that stiffness is not a physical property. It is, but different from tension.

Tension is the force that is applied to both ends of the string, stiffness is the force to be applied to bend the string. And I would add another parameter of the string which is elasticity, the elongation of the string with increased tension.

In some cases it even might make sense to differ between torsional stiffness and bending stiffness, i.e. when using the bow.

Stiffness can change a lot during the lifespan of a string. Multifiber core might get stiffer when the fibers "glue" together, wounded strings might become less stiff because of microscopic winding separation due to bending by the vibrating string and also because of elongation of the core over time.
And there is also a difference in damping of the stiffness force, so a solid core steel string is more springy than a rope core steel string (same with monofiber synthetic core vs. multifiber synthetic core).

Jörg
 
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#5
Some very interesting insight Jorg. String tension is really one of the most important aspects of an instruments setup, I believe that the exact amount of tension that the top of the instrument should receive in order to gain optimal resonance is much more varied on double basses than on other string instruments since there is so much more variation in build. Just consider the great variation in the neck angle alone that you see in double basses whereas most violins vary to a much lesser degree and then of course the question of shape, size and varying degrees of thickness. So every double bass has a ideal level of tension that is influenced mainly by the neck's angle and the physical properties of the strings (and of course the relative height of the bridge...)

This is why string manufacturers (such as pirastro) should disclose the tension specs since it would make at least one aspect of tension more clear and it would in fact encourage people to try different strings so I dont see why they choose to remain aloof on this topic.
 
#7
I think one reason why Pirastro discloses tension data is, that tension alone is not enough to decide wheather a string sounds good on a certain instrument or not. (Another one might be not to be able to compare their string to the strings of other manufacturers by data.)
But I agree that tension data might help to decide which string might be a choice and which one is most certainly the wrong one for a certain bass and application.
I heard some rumor that Innovation wants to publish their tension data in the future, they are just not ready to do this (still collecting data, I assume).

Height of action (bridge height) as well as neck angle influences the pressure on the belly, so even high action lower tension gut might have a similar pressure than low action higher tension steel.

Since nowadays we have over 100 different kinds of double bass strings on the market, we need some technical data about the strings to concentrate on those set that may work for us and our basses and that we can afford (hopefully).

Jörg
 
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#8
DoubleMIDI said:
I heard some rumor that Innovation wants to publish their tension data in the future, they are just not ready to do this (still collecting data, I assume).
Click to expand...

I believe that's correct. You can ask them - when I did, some months ago, they just didn't have the measurements. (Pirastro also replied, but didn't respond - they just sent an advertisement for their EPs.)
 
#9
I think this reluctance to provide the tension measurements must be some kind of unfortunate marketing decision on the part of Pirastro because it would be very easy for them to obtain and publish this info.
Very silly if you ask me because the more information people have the more they like to experiment. I cant see what they think to gain by maintaining this secrecy about something so simple and which can in fact help people to make decisions about what string best suites their instrument...
In my case Im just not willing to spend $200 on the EP weichs at this moment just to find out how they compare tensionwise with the passiones...
 
#10
Hello, almost ten years later.
For those out there still seeking some data about Pirastro string tension and bumped on this jurassic thread,
I have just joined your quest, now that I am thinking about migrating to Eva's from Spiros.

This Jordan guy has published something about Pirastro string tensions for double bass.
Unfortunately, most Pirastro sets are there, but he did not include Passione's or Eva's!
Double Bass String Tensions
 
#11
Hi, Bruno. You can find the tension specs on every single Pirastro string on their web pages. They´ve published them for quite some time already. Just go to www.pirastro.com and choose your instrument.
You can see there that Passione meds have more tension than EP weichs. But having played them both on the same bass I can say that EP weichs feel a bit stiffer. I still chose them for my classical bass because they sound bigger and deeper arco than Passione meds. And they are not too stiff for pizz either.
 

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