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Double Bass Wound guts: remove winding from old/distressed string to repurpose?

M

MDH

Jul 18, 2010
12
0
#1
Hi, regarding wound gut strings, if you took the winding off are you back to what would be considered a usable "plain" gut string or is the gut string manufacturing process different for wound strings? Is it even possible to cleanly remove the winding? I looked here and online and didn't see anything.

Wondering because if I was to acquire some old worn out, distressed, or even broken gut strings [cheap] to experiment with on a 1/4 size bass [35" scale] and maybe 4/4 cello as well [27" scale]. Equal amounts pizz and arco, improvisation, in that regard only interested in plain guts [at least as far as what I'm imagining :) ].

I realize unwound they will no longer be the pitch they were designed for, and it will still be a beat up string, but will the gut core be back to square one as far as function goes? thanks for any info!
 
#2
MDH said:
Hi, regarding wound gut strings, if you took the winding off are you back to what would be considered a usable "plain" gut string or is the gut string manufacturing process different for wound strings? Is it even possible to cleanly remove the winding? I looked here and online and didn't see anything.

Wondering because if I was to acquire some old worn out, distressed, or even broken gut strings [cheap] to experiment with on a 1/4 size bass [35" scale] and maybe 4/4 cello as well [27" scale]. Equal amounts pizz and arco, improvisation, in that regard only interested in plain guts [at least as far as what I'm imagining :) ].

I realize unwound they will no longer be the pitch they were designed for, and it will still be a beat up string, but will the gut core be back to square one as far as function goes? thanks for any info!
Click to expand...

my cat chewed up a wound gut E and I took all the winding off...took about 6 hours not joking. one strand of winding at a time. made a good HEAVY plain gut G.
 
#3
Sam Dingle said:
my cat chewed up a wound gut E and I took all the winding off...took about 6 hours not joking. one strand of winding at a time. made a good HEAVY plain gut G.
Click to expand...

heh, thanks! OK, so wound E became a heavy plain G [was hoping for more mass than that], good to know. But... I assume that's on a 3/4 scale or larger? My application would be 1/4 bass or 4/4 cello. Alright so I guess my theory was sound then, remove winding and you have a usable plain string. Hopefully a focused human could make quicker work out of it [6 hrs!], but if it's really labor intensive that makes the concept a little less appealing :)
 
#7
no offense taken at all haha. I took breaks and whatnot. Its a small wire tightly wrapped against a 42 (at least) inch string. i would get a ton off and have a pile of wire and not notice a difference. i even went for my daily 2 mile walk picking at it lol.

At many points i had to use needle nose pliers to re-start the unwinding. Then when enough of the string was plain, it was hard to get a good grip on the thing to keep pulling the wire so you had to use extra force and then i ended up having to make long wide swings with my arm to actually get around the loose part of the string...

remembering all this i really don't recommend doing this at all...
 
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#8
One of those "what's the worst that could happen?" experiments.

The silver wrap on a Eudoxa A string broke, and I saw that there was copper wrap underneath it. So I removed all of the outer wrap and strung it up as a D string. It was a little too tense, and it worked for pizz but not for arco. I wouldn't want to spend the time to get down to the gut core.
 
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#9
Thanks everyone, whoa this place is a great resource of info! OK perhaps that explains why I couldn't find anything searching, if de-winding were easy then it would be the well documented ol' 'strip the wound string to make it a thinner plain one' trick. I'll be keeping an eye out for deals on used plain strings, wrapped as well I guess just to check it out.

I'm loving the huge kevlar core Supreme Dirty Guts on the little plywood bass [tuned up a whole step is working] but in my situation after the initial thrill wore off I'm really hearing the plasticy sound they can make [small practice/studio room, heavily muted bridge]. Really interested in exploring gut and all of its quirks. I did find what I thought was a pretty good deal on an unused set of plain Clefs but balking at putting them on just yet, wanted to mess around with something used first. thanks again!
 
#13
KUNGfuSHERIFF said:
As Sam warned you, if you’re REALLY patient you can make a wound E into a fine plain D and a wound A into a plain G. I’ve also done it. Not fun.
Click to expand...

Sam Dingle said:
hmmmm i guess my E should have been a D might explain why it was so heavy
Click to expand...
This was quite helpful as I'd be more interested in the E-D conversion compared to A-G, I have the little bass strung up as a 3-string E-A-D with the Superior Dirty Guts [strings 1, 3, and 5 from the 6 string bump set] then tuned up a whole step F#-B-E. thanks again!
 
#14
I've done it too. Not fun at all! Once I had all wounding off it left me with a whitish paper coating stuck to the plain gut beneath. I took sandpaper in my hand grabbing the string and pulling like the way you pull herbs off a stem. That stuff came off fine. Still use that red gut string today.
 

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