Looking for a thicker guage baritone string

I've been looking for the older style Aquilas but looks like they've been discontinued as I can only find the New Nylgut and Red series Aquilas.

The guage of the two are narrower than the old style "tan colored" packaged set and makes the b string on the Webber buzz.

Does anyone know of a bari. set with wound round 3&4 with 1&2 strings with a wider guage than the new Aquilas? Or, where to get the tan colored packaged set. I checked Elderly and a few others, only the 21U's and 89U Red series.

Maybe it's time to look at an unwound 3&4 set.

Try one-or two thicknesses of ordinary paper in the nut slot under that buzzing B string. (You want to carefully tear off the excess after tensioning the string otherwise the paper will actually buzz against the string!) Anyway, if that fixes the buzz you can do a permanent fix pretty easily. Using a cue tip and rubbing alcohol clean the nut and especially the slot for the b string. After the alcohol dries put a tiny dab of a nail-hardening clear nail polish in the slot. If it pools up swipe a piece of paper through the slot to remove the extra. Let it dry thoroughly - several hours before slipping the string back into the slot. If the string still buzzes you can repeat with another dab of the nail polish. In a really bad case I've had to do three applications. Let each dry for several hours and test it before applying another because you don't want to build the slot up any higher than just enough to stop the buzzing.

You can also use a dab of thin super glue instead of nail polish - however, this is much more difficult to control and it's easy to get the slot too high even on the first application (it's a much faster process though, as you only have to wait a few minutes for the glue to dry). However, I don't recommend the glue unless you have a nut file so you can work the slot deeper again, if needed. Also, if you get too much glue it can run down and bond the nut pretty permanently to the finger board. Again, unless you're pretty confident working with super glue I'd not use this approach.

You can also just leave the paper under the string - the only thing there is it's a pain as you have to remember to replace it when changing strings, etc.

John

Thanks John, that's a great idea. I've used finger nail polish to flatten a note on my Native American flutes if I made the hole to big. Worked great. I think I'll try a set of thicker strings first. I'm not liking these Aquila reds too much.

Patrick Madsen said:

Thanks John, that's a great idea. I've used finger nail polish to flatten a note on my Native American flutes if I made the hole to big. Worked great. I think I'll try a set of thicker strings first. I'm not liking these Aquila reds too much.

Click to expand...

Sweeet - NAFs are one of my other weaknesses though I haven't played much of anything but bass and ukulele for the last three years. It truly is a small world.

John