Just amazing and beautiful playing, John! And a beautiful tune!
Gerolds strings are really special. I have been playing on gut-strings the last 9 years, most of them on the same set of naked Gamut pistoys (talk about durability), and only have good things to say about Dan Larson and his strings.
About a year ago I bought a new (old) bass with a C-extension. At first I moved my old Pistoys to the new bass, except for the E because it wasn’t long enough for the C-extension.
Instead I began using a Garbo E/C-string, and that worked well and had a nice balance in sound and feel.
But a couple of months ago I had to get some work done on the bass, and my luthier and I discovered that the Garbo-string somehow had gotten stuck inside the extension, and was unravelling and almost impossible to get out.
He fortunately succeded in getting the string out without damaging my extension.
I contacted Gerold about getting a new set of strings, as I had heard many good things about them and was curious and had a very nice communication with him via e-mail.
I knew that I wanted to stick with naked gut for my G- and D-string, and thought that his B-roque set would be a good match for my needs.
But Gerold told my that the B-roque E/C-string would be thicker in diameter than my Garbo E/C-string and therefore would not fit my extension. The end result was a mixed set with naked gut G- and D-strings and his Basso A- and E/C-strings (B-roque special edition as he called them).
Extremely beautiful strings that I enjoy very much. Definitly as good as my previous strings, but also very different. His naked gut strings are darker and a little more like pirastro’s naked gut strings, but better quality, sound and feel in my experience. I was worried if the E and A from the Basso set would be a good match, but they really are. I don’t really miss anything from my previous set, and the sustain (on E and A) is a little longer but in a very beautiful and gut-like way.
Here is a live studio recording of them from a couple of months ago in a trio-context. Recorded with a Remic Red, and another condenser mic, that I don’t recall the name of:
