Thomastik 3885.0W Spirocore Bass 3/4 L

This is the standard set of the nineties, you can see Christian Mcbride, Dave Holland and Larry Grenadier play on them amongst many. The older they are the better they get, I had a pair of strings on for 8 years and they still sounded amazing. Absolute best E and A string to me. D and G is up for taste. It's a great string for Pizzicato jazz bass. I can encourage everyone to experiment with different strings to come to your own sound and this is a great start.

Having taken up the double bass after 30 years of electric I wasn't entirely sure which way I'd eventually go - orchestral playing, slap, jazz, folk etc etc. What I decided I wanted was a string set that would give me a balanced performance across the range of styles so that I could make progress in all options before opting for one style.

I would say the result has been very successful in all the areas I had a right to expect a result. What I mean is that, as I'd rather gathered from readings lots of reviews, these strings give a solid workmanlike performance across a range of genres. Although new to bowing, I'm able to produce full sonorous tones (on the good days!) and when proper players have borrowed the bass or my teacher demonstrates something to me using my bass, I realise the richness that these strings are capable of producing in the right fingers.

The strings are quite forgiving to a new player's hands and I haven't created any callouses or sore spots. That said, they clearly aren't just beginner's strings because, as I say, real players make my bass sound great with them.

The one area I have had less success is in slap. I know they are not "proper" slap strings, but a few videos on the internet show what can be done with them for slap. However, I'm guessing that those players probably didn't learn rockabilly on these strings, even if they subsequently like the sound they produce for a skilled slap player, and I've given up that idea until I either restring the bass with something else entirely or get a dedicated rockabilly bass.

All in all I've felt these strings have worked with me, allowing me to learn to play the instrument and fitting a wide variety of genres. They came properly boxed and packaged and in secure outer packaging. All in all I've been thoroughly pleased and would certainly buy again.

These strings are a must have.
Thomastik spirocores are an industry standard and as such, are used by many bass players. I like them a lot, they have a pretty full sound, they work good under almost every condition. The tuning is kept nicely and the light gauge makes them easy to play. They work pretty well with the bow and they sound relatively good when amplified.

On the other side, I've found that the E string is a little too poor in sound, compared to the thomastik medium. In my experience they sound really nice when the action of the bass is pretty low, the light gauge makes it so that you can really reach a woody tone and I like that "dirty" sound that can come out of it. Sadly that is not the same experience with my bass, since I have a slightly higher action, but on other instruments that can work better.

The A and the D strings are my favourite in this set up. They have a snappy sound and they're easy to play!

The G string is also pretty nice, except I find it slightly too low in volume when in thumb position. As well I'm not a fan of the "meowing" sound that you might achieve by using this string, it does sound to my ear as an old fashioned 80's sound, which is not what I'm striving for.

I've found myself trying to mix the strings a lot and having both medium and light version of this strings I had a weird set up:

G - Thomastik Medium
D and A - Thomastik Light
E - Thomastik Medium

Certainly on every bass they sound different and If I listen to bass players with the same strings on different basses the result is something else.

I change strings a lot, due to my personal research for the right sound I have in mind and these helped me figuring it out.
As I said it's a must have, because they just are super reliable strings and they'll last a lifetime, opposed to gut strings for example.