Hi everyone.
I´d like to share my experiences with Velvet Compas 360 strings. Now, since I only had them for a few hours, not much can be said yet, but I´m going to expand on it after they had their break-in time.
I have to admit, that whole velvet land is almost new to me- apart from a 1-year stint with Compas 180s, that I used about 4 years ago because I was tired of my usual steel-string (helicore pizz light). I play jazz professionally , mainly pizzicato, bowing almost only for my own home pleasure. On a side-note: On my bass (O. Rubner, 1946, 108cm scale) helicore pizz strings bow REALLY GREAT (better tan the hybrids, strangely enough).
This time, I was tired of, well, something. Not exactly how the helicores sounded- it was their relative unevenness (on my bass) that bugged me, the G-string always (as in, my last 3 sets) sounded old right out of the bag, the A-string buzzed the first 4 days (last 2 sets), I had 2 String-breaks on A-Strings (one was brand-new) and so on. So when it was annual "time to change", I thought rather I go back to THE mainstream jazz steel string (spiro weich, you can see I like the soft touch on my rather high action), or be a little daring and try something different. I opted for the latter, partly because [Invalid or Expired Link Removed] revealed that the differences are much bigger to the player´s ear than to the listener (granted: some strings project and cut through better than others). Lots of it comes from fingers, hands, and the instrument.
That was especially exciting since a) the Compas 360 are comparably inexpensive (compared to the Garbos or Animas), and b) these strings never really left their state of obscurity. I know one guy that played them years ago, here on TalkBass the only thing I could find (apart from one post from 4 years ago where somebody got rid of them after a week or so) was uncletoad who
obviously didn´t dig them too much.
Now, here´s my first impression:
-Way more sustain and growl than I expected. That surprised me, and then again it is obviously pretty dependent on the bass setup. So the E-string does what I like: Growl, but not with that spiro-metal-harshness, quite warm, in fact. All others sustain equally good, does not seem to be lots less than steel strings, it´s just, well, not so steel-ish.
-Lots of pump. That´s not so surprising, that´s why velvet makes strings- gut pump. In this case, not too much, but considerably more than steel. They have a pretty big amplitude and "move a lot of air". And they even have that pump feeling in thumb position, so they sound powerful up there too.
-Very even. There´s spots that sound a little nosy (like, Db to Eb on the G), but that´s only in the player´s ear. I recorded them (****** recording, I´ll make a better one and post it, maybe). No nosyness. Very even strings, volume-wise and sound-wise. That´s lots better than heli pizz.
-Bowing: a little tougher than I´m used to, but once you get it, can be quite nice, I guess. At the moment it´s not so pretty, a little harsh and they don´t start too well. I´ll wait with my verdict until they are settled. Oh, and the open E-string has a monster buzz. I hope that one goes away with time.
Feel: a little roundwound. But not too much. Soft as all the velvets I´ve played on jam session basses (low tension). Nice way of digging into the string and enjoying their "bounce".
So, all in all, I´m pretty pleased so far. I´ll report on cutting though a band and amplifying it once I have experiences. As of now, I can recommend these strings to those who want the velvet touch, but don´t like the Garbos or Animas (like me- at least the Garbos always had something plastic to them, a little like clothesline). Maybe I could go so far and say, if you like steel strings for their sustain, but don´t like twang or harshness, give those Compas 360s a shot. It´s pretty safe also, since the special velvet ends make it easy to sell them in rather good condition.
)
