… I have tried Helicore, a couple of sets of Corelli and most recently the Obligato. The Obligatos are very tense to me. I’ve had them on my bass about 4 months. I’m considering changing them out for Eurosonics light or medium tension. Something easier on my hands.
Obligato are medium tension on a 3/4 scale and even lower tension than that on a 1/2 scale.
Corelli strings are medium low to medium tension, but thin and due to the steel core harder to press down than the more stretchy synthetic or gut cores.
Francois advise to visit a luthier for a setup check is a really good advise, but you need to decide first if you want a very low and more stretchy string tension at a higher string action (plain gut, synthetic core) or a medium to a bit higher tension at a very low string action (which both might need work on the fingerboard).
For your kind of music I would rather go the higher action route, but even for that the current action might a bit high.
The problem with a shorter scale instrument is that you need more mass at the vibrating string to get the same tension as on a 3/4 scale. So a 3/4 string on a 1/2 strings scale instrument gives you a lower tension.
In general you can mount 3/4 strings on a 1/2 size instrument. Just have the silk part go through the hole, not the playable wound part. Do a few windings away from the nut slot and then do a quick crossing over the previous windings and the wind on the other side of the peg hole. Avoid contacting the peg box with the string on the peg!
The other thing is that the shorter the scale the thinner the string needs to be to vibrate and sustain well in higher positions. So a string that is easy to press down due to its thickness might get a shorter sustain the shorter the vibrating string length is. Not much of a problem if you stay away from thumb position, but if you want to play up there sometimes or often, a thick string might not be a solution.
It can happen that a wound string that is wound onto the peg breaks the winding (mostly synthetic wound) or cut into the core (metal wound, synthetic or silk core). But that hasn’t ever happened to me (but a few others).
The most sensitive strings have been discontinued now or are rather expensive (Genssler/Tempera), so you won’t use them.
You might be interested in the information that I have published in my Dropbox, specially the formulas (needs JavaScript enabled) and the excel file with the unified (recalculated) tension data. You find a link in one of the string stickies. You can enter you scale length and get any string tension in the table recalculated to it.
Also consider downtuned solo strings (which might only be available at 3/4 scales). You can simulate this by downtuning your current strings by a whole tone. You can simulate Weich/Light strings coming from mediums by downtuning a half tone.
That way you might find a tension range you like. BTW, the showed formulas are just for information, they are self-calculating with JavaScript, just don’t forget to press enter to let it calculate.
You can first look at the selection of 1/2 scale strings, but if you cannot find anything that fits your needs, you should seriously consider 3/4 strings.
I had a similar problem at a higher level with my 110 cm 4/4. The action was high because the luthier where I bought the new bass told me the top might lower a bit, so I tried Spirocore 4/4 Medium and had problems after the first set. My fifth high C string (not a good idea on a 4/4 or 7/8) cut into my finger because it was very thin and with a lot of tension. The string cut so deep into the left hand finger flesh that I hardly could get it down onto the fingerboard.
One solution was a much lower tension string or a less dense string that has a larger diameter (but then the other strings need to be changed too).
The bass didn’t respond that well to lower tension strings and the one steel core selection was discontinued soon after I tried the high C. Another easily broke and was discontinued too. Both steel core. The other steel core strings had too much tension for the setup.
So I tried synthetic core metal wound strings (I bow sometimes) and the thicker higher strings and the higher elasticity of the core made it possible to play in thumb position that was almost impossible before. Then a setup change first from me, then from a luthier that I couldn’t handle myself made the bass even more playable and some older strings I disliked before became more playable.
A combination of G and D in gut or textured monofiber synthetics (what dhergert uses) and A and E in synthetic or metal wound synthetic core (silver slaps, EP slaps, downtuned Evah Solos) might be a good combination for you with your current setup.
If you have a luthier not to far away you can ask for some old strings he has to try them and give them back when you are finished.
Best tell us the distances of string and fingerboard at both ends and we can tell you if it is unusually large.
If you haven’t played double bass for a longer time, it might be possible to develop more power in your hands and a thicker skin to handle the beast.
.
