[davidseidel]

I put a full set of Chordas on 6 months ago on my attributed old English bass and though I am not currently doing any orchestral playing I have certainly done plenty of bowing on them one way and another. This bass is heavyweight and sounds and plays really well for arco in general but I mainly play jazz etc. The Chordas are pretty heavy gauge by my reckoning especially the D, A and E meaning thick rather than heavy weight. Once you practice a bit on them they are not so hard to bow and have a wonderful meaty tone or should I say gutsy? The great thing is in the 50s and earlier you didn't have to have different strings for arco or pizz and these do great with both IMHO. But at a price as they are less forgiving with the bow and you have to be more precise in every stroke but isn't that a good thing anyway? And the more soulful deep and colorful tone is ample reward. I have used Dlugolecki's G and D as well and they were nice too but these are maybe stronger sound overall.

I know lots of players who were around when gut strings were the mainstream say been there done that etc but I can't believe they didn't hear something missing when metal came in...... I know it was more of a practical modernising change but at the expense of the glorious classic bass tone which only real gut gives IMHO!

The plain guts stay in tune pretty well but the wound ones will change drastically when weather changes but during course of a gig I find tuning pretty good actually.

It may be worth trying Gerold Genssler as well - I had some from him in very early days of Velvet when they were making gut strings and they really had a sound, so I would imagine his new varieties would be excellent too - just haven't got around to trying his yet as I am more than happy with the Chordas for now, for what its worth.