I tend to dislike wound 4ths simply because they tend to be a bit too strong and overpower everything else. Well, at least for me anyway.
That said, I found the most balanced, responsive, and long-lasting low-G sets are the flouros like Orcas, Worth Brown, or Fremont. Of the three, I prefer Orcas, with Worth Brown and Fremont a very very tied second.
Southcoast are exceptional as well. Though it seem to me that perhaps they are better with the alternative tunings for tenors that the GCEA type, which places them just behind the three I mentioned. For re-entrant Southcoast are absolutely on par with Worth and Orcas, and I would go to them in a heartbeat.
Just an observation
Hello Poi and thanks for the kind words on our reentrant sets.
I think, however, you may have possibly confused the options we have for Baritone with what we have for the standard Tenor. With the Baritone, most of our strings could be classified as being for "alternate tunings". It's also true that we don't offer any of the options you mentioned for Tenor.
When it comes to an unwound linear (or low 4th set), I think our 4th string material is as good (or better) than anything else available. That said, I don't think ours (or anyone else's) gives good performance in a linear C tuning (g - c' - e' - a') on the 17" scale of a standard Tenor. There are two approaches to an unwound low 4th. One is to offer a thicker material that gives adequate tension. We have never found one that doesn't sound dead. The other option is to use a thinner string - one that gives better response, but at the cost of a tension we find unacceptably low. That sort of material performs very nicely, however, a step up, in a linear D tuning, or as some would say "low A".
What we then do is put that string together with 3 slightly lighter strings than the Orcas, Worths, etc., and the result is that you have a beautifully performing set. It gives linear C on a Baritone – on a Tenor you go one step up to Linear D. I think this type of formulation is truly the only one that offers good performance in a linear set-up without the use of wound strings.
It’s also true we don’t offer a set for Tenor (or for anything else) with just a wound 4th – never will. I agree with you completely on the sound of these sets. Here it has nothing to do with the performance of the 4th string itself, it’s just that it will never sound right out there all alone. A treble material 3rd string in this arrangement is by nature so much deader than the wound 4th, that not only does your wound string often sound out of place in chording, especially unfretted, but for those who pick, you simply can’t have a worse transition than the 4-3 in that set-up.
All this leads up to what we do offer – Kanaka mentioned these G650s – there are actually 3 G650 sets, and all will give linear C tuning on the standard Tenor. As you can guess by now, they all have (at least) 2 wound strings. The effect may not be what you imagine. It’s not that an extra wound string makes the set even more overbearing than the single wound set-up. In contrast, the whole arrangement now sounds smoother. The 4-3 transition works, and because the 2nd string is much thinner than a treble material 3rd, the 3-2 transition from wound to treble works just fine. Now all that’s needed is quality wound material.
One of these sets (G650 Round Wounds) comes with the familiar Round Wound tie-on material. In our case, they’re not overly bright, and they’re polished for less squeak. Two others (G650 Flat Wounds & G650 Classical Metals) have ball end Flat Wound material. I’m pretty sure this is what Kanaka was alluding to, as these strings give a sound that’s even smoother than our Round Wound strings, and eliminate finger squeak altogether.
So take another look, Poi. True, we don’t offer the two common set-ups for this tuning. True also that a double wound set-up costs more than the other options. But also true that for this tuning, on this size instrument, a double wound set-up with good material will give you your best sound.
