For what it's worth, the "Stark" Perpetuals are not just "added windings" onto the regular strings - they're manufactured entirely differently than the standard "Orchestral" Perpetuals. And, in my personal experience (my own bass has a full stark set on it as I type this) they are - unlike most "stark" strings - not significantly higher in tension than the orchestrals. So what's the deal with the Starks?
For Spirocores, they offer three choices - Light, Medium and Heavy (Weich, Mittel, and Stark). For them, "Stark" means higher tension, thicker strings. Presumably, made the same way, but adding (or removing) some material/windings/etc. (Overly simplistic, but you get the point.)
The Perpetual's "Stark" designation, at least IMHO, doesn't indicate higher tension, but rather "bolder sound." They are also thicker in diameter (gauge) than the orchestrals, but the tension and flexibility is still very friendly. And to make that happen required that they take several steps back and reconsider more than just winding count, as I'm told. They were basically re-engineered almost from the ground up.
The reason they exist is this: when the original Perpetual sets went out to a selection of production set testing, they received a significant amount of feedback that some players found the G-string too thin (small in diameter). Players liked its sound, but weren't crazy about the "skinny" feel under their hands. So the mad scientists at Pirastro tried some alternate materials/winding/black magic to try to recreate the G-string but with a thicker profile (without making it higher tension or stiffer.) What they came up with worked well, tone-wise and playability-wise, with the rest of the set - but it had a bit of a beefier sound. So rather than replacing the original G, which people still did like, they offered it as a new alternate "stark" version. A similar D-string made sense, so they engineered that too, and that's how they were sold for a while. A regular set with options to replace the D and G with a "stark" option.
The stark E and A strings came later - they just came out a few months ago.
Since they require more labor and materials to make, they cost more than the standard orchestra variant, which adds to the confusion. Were I in the room, my marketing-trained mind would have suggested to the Pirastro "powers that be" that they call them something different, since they feel and sound different from the Perpetual Orchestra - maybe Perpetual Deluxe? Goodness knows they've used that designation plenty throughout their catalog(!)
But, I think "Stark" has a well-known meaning, and these strings subvert that meaning a bit - again, IMO.
All that to say - the Perpetual Orchestra strings don't suck. They're great, and lots of customers use them. I think that - for me - the stark G is a big improvement, with a bolder timbre that I prefer. The D-string is also an improvement, but perhaps not as profound a difference as with the G.
The new stark E and A strings replaced the standard orch E and A, and I can say there was a difference in them, too - some folks have taken to putting stark G and D on top, and Spiros on the bottom to get that beefier, punchier tone down low - I think the stark E and A do that well enough for me to not have to bother mixing sets.
So, the TL;DR* to me is: If it's me, I definitely get the Stark G. If I have the scratch, I get the whole stark set, but if money's tight, the regular E-A-D strings are no slouches.
I hope that little ramble into the weeds was helpful in some way. It's all subjective, and YMMV, yada yada yada.
*Too Long; Didn't Read
