About six months ago,
I started our spring concerts series with a brand new set of Elixir
medium bass strings,
based on the various recommendations I had found regarding these, centering
notably on their long life span. In spite of the various
warnings I had read about their peculiar tone, I thought I'd
give them a chance to prove their worth.
For some reason, I had never bothered to pursue the relationship between string gauge and actual string diameter. However, when I sorted my stash of old strings after putting brand new Elixir medium strings in order to sound best at next week's concert, I found several strings for which I didn't know the gauge, meaning they would be next to useless in case of an emergency (which is typically the only situation under which I'd put on a used string). And I only had a metric vernier caliper available...