i remember you got a full set of them for Christmas or something back then but took them off after less than a week.
didn't you also try the guts with Spiros on the bottom for a time, like a Stark E and medium A? as i recall, you didn't stick with that mix for very long, and it was because of the tension difference.
tension-wise, guts take some getting used to. so easy to pluck, but they need a different technique. it is also a matter of the style of music.
Yea the full set was so far away from what I was doing at the time that is wasn't useful for me. I didn't have the time to learn to like them and let them settle in. Tuning was nightmare, I couldn't play much in the upper register on the low strings. Perhaps that would have cleared up later but I didn't have time to find out. Now would be a better time for me to explore them, but I don't have the cheese to buy them.
I spent about a year with Spiro mittel bottoms and heavier Gamut Gut tops. I liked a whole bunch of things about that sound but eventually moved back to all spiros because the gigs I was playing worked better with them. Moving inside and outside in all kinds of weather is hell with gut strings when you do it every day. The cold made them go one way the heat the other. When outside in the summer sweat made me stick to them and I couldn't play right.
Tension difference between spiro and gut I didn't mind so much until I started playing hard and loud. Guts bottom out where the steel keep going and that got weird to the point where I'd avoid the gut section of the bass when things got loud because it couldn't keep up.
When they are cooking in the right music and environment there is nothing better than playing on gut.
The reason I gave up on them and so many others did back in the 60's was steel is stable no matter where you go in whatever weather and it has tons of power and sounds great under the bow.
My experience however is that gut has it's own kind of power that is much kinder on your hands. It takes less energy to get out a sound that projects in a room. It seems less loud on top of the bass but in the room I think it's about the same or better with gut. Pizz it cuts in a way that you can't duplicate with steel. Arco has its own version of those things but the fine hand required to get a sound out of them that doesn't suck is beyond many who wield a stick.
Now I don't travel much. I don't play much compared to what I have even earlier this year. At some point I'd love to revisit the full set and give it another go, especially with the bow.
Of course now I don't have an extra $500 for a set of strings and I know better than to try to mess with the cheap stuff.
Sooner or later I'll get back around to it.
