Jazz/Pizz String taste and choices...

[Bob Branstetter]

I used Thomastic Spirocores for about 20 years. I discovered over the years that my skin or sweat was acidic enough that it caused the Thomastics to go "false" very quickly. Because of that, I was having to replace the string sets about every 3 months (I was playing 6 nights/wk). In 1996 I had the opportunity to meet Norman Pickering while attending a violin makers convention. Dr. Pickering is probably best remembered by us old guys for inventing the famous Pickering phonograph cartridge for turntables. He is also one of the World's foremost experts on violin family strings and wrote a book titled "The Bowed String" which many consider to be the bible of string books. He had been hired as a consultant by the D'Addario String Company to design a new line of violin family strings. When I told him that I was a jazz bassist, he was kind enough to ask me to be one of the beta testers for the their not yet released Hybrid bass strings. I loved them and have been using them ever since. Apparently they use a different type of metal for the string wrapping since I have not had any problem with these strings going "false". I don't care much for their pizzicato strings, but I've had good experience with both the Hybrids for jazz and the Orchestra strings for arco. The nice thing is that they are also somewhat cheaper than the Thomastics.