Steel or Gut? the best strings for the double bass(Letto 204 volte)

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Steel or Intestine?

Many people ask me why I use gut strings, which most people view with reverential awe. “What, you use gut strings for jazz too?” or “You use gut strings in the orchestra too? How do you do that?” As if there were only one repertoire suitable for gut strings.

However: without a doubt, the gut is better. 

I started playing the double bass around 1975, teaching myself. Back then, I obviously knew nothing about strings, how to use a bow, jazz, etc. At the time, I liked a sound with a lot of sustain, little attack and a bit of a ’meowing“ quality (today I find it awful). Pickups were few and far between, expensive and had a terrible sound. I remember the Polytone, a kind of screw that was installed between the bridge feet, the Barcus Berry, a piezoelectric bar that was attached to the bridge with sticky putty, and the Underwood, a double piezo that was inserted into the folds of the bridge. The latter in particular had a characteristic mid-range, nasal sound with a lot of sustain. 

The strings

But let's get back to strings: the best ones for me were Thomastik Spirocore, strings that sound the same on almost any instrument, which is a good thing if you have a rubbish instrument, but a bad thing if you are lucky enough to own an excellent Italian instrument from the last century.

It was in 1989, when I started playing in a baroque music group, that I put gut strings on my instrument. At first it was a shock: everything I had learned at the conservatory seemed to not work, but then I realised that everything became easier. I had to use a little bow (slow bow) very close to the string and closer to the bridge, but I had twice the sound. The attack was immediate, without any inertia, the sound brilliant and full of harmonics and at the same time deep, very clear and crisp in fast passages. With pizzicato, the sound was much shorter, but round and percussive. To put it in comic book terms, I had gone from a double bass that goes “meow” to a double bass that goes “boom”. In short, it was another world. It's not just a question of “historically informed performances”, it's simply much better. After all, until the 1950s, almost no one used steel strings. Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, Oscar Pettiford, Scott LaFaro, Charles Mingus in jazz; and in classical music, one for all: Giovanni Bottesini, considered the greatest double bass player of all time.  All the greatest double bassists played with gut strings, and today some people wonder how they did it. Even with the electric bass, although gut strings could not be used because magnetic pickups only work with metal, all the best lines motown They were recorded with a Fender Precision and flatwound strings, which for electric bass are like using gut strings: a “fat” sound and little sustain, i.e. maximum incisiveness and rhythm.

Flaws?

The drawbacks? The cost. Gut strings are made almost entirely by hand by skilled craftsmen who have done their research to find the best “recipes”, based on texts from the past and a few ancient strings that have defied the ravages of time and survived to the present day. Therefore, the cost can vary from £400 to £1,000-1,200 or more per set. Another possible drawback is that, being organic material, the strings may differ (very slightly) from one another, even if they come from the same maker. Just like instruments, after all.