Traditional gut strings and strings made of synthetic materials: Italian string maker Mimmo Peruffo is an equal specialist in both fields. Under his Aquila brand, he offers gut and nylon strings for a wide range of instruments. What is special about Aquila is that it uses a special machine to produce the monofilaments itself, so that Peruffo does not have to resort to ready-made nylon strings, but can control the composition of the synthetics individually and adjust and optimize them at any time.

Among Peruffo’s most recent developments are double bass strings, which he modeled on old gut strings. He used post-war gut strings of the Kaplan Red-o-ray and Golden Spiral brands, which have disappeared from the market in the meantime, as a model. These are the brands whose sound we know from recordings with Scott La Faro, Charlie Haden and many other legendary jazz bassists. Peruffo obtained strings still in existence, measured and analyzed them, and rebuilt them. Like the historical models, the Aquila replicas that Peruffo offers under the names “Golden Springs” or “Red Springs” consist of a gut core with nylon wrapping. But Peruffo did not leave it at this reverse engineering, but went one step further. He developed a second version in which he replaced the gut core with a plastic core. Sonically, this new development (“Golden Springs Synthetic”) comes very close to the replica, but has the great advantage of being more tuning stable.

In addition, he was able to eliminate a disadvantage of the original D-string. Compared to the G-string, the D-strings sound a bit duller. By adding metal powder to the synthetic mixture, the tension of the “Red Spiral Synthetic” was increased, making its sound more defined.
The new Aquila strings are aimed at jazz bassists who mainly play pizzicato. For bassists looking for a gut string replacement for slapping, Peruffo recommends his “Sugar Slaps” – monofilament (plain) strings made of bioplastic to which he added sugar (!) during manufacture to achieve the desired sound.

Mimmo Peruffo about his double bass strings at Youtube