It has been a while (a few months...) since I changed the second highest string (d string) on my Baroque Viola... it is one of these strings where the guage (diameter) of the gut is sufficiently thick such that the string rarely snaps (unlike the thinner A string and the violin strings)... and so, the string eventually goes false or brittle... but slowly slowly over time.
Most of the time, the decline is relatively un-noticeable... Sometimes, there is fraying, but most of the time it just gets slowly less responsive generally and in edge cases, it is a pain in the arse to control. Most of the time, I will just chalk it up to me having a bad day... or the bow needing more rosin... or just the travel between humid/dry and hot/cold conditions is just playing havoc with the response.
... but the concert the other night was so much of a pain in the arse. When playing very lightly and softly on the string, it would have a tendency to not kick into the proper fundamental vibration and would whistle instead. Sure, controllable by bowing with a faster bow stroke much further away from the bridge than usual... but given that the two neighbouring strings weren't suffering this problem, it was requiring a little bit more extra effort to get everything sounding the way that it needed to...
... and not that anyone in the audience would ever care. Professionals... that is would we are paid to do, not to make excuses.
But still annoying for me... and the first thing I did as soon as I got backstage was to rip the string off (gently...) and replace it immediately so that the gut would have to time stretch and settle before the next concert the following evening.
Sadly, I thought that I had had a similar brand/maker of the string in my case.. I was packing a lighter case for air travel, which meant that I repacked spare strings... fewer and more specific ones for the instrument that I was travelling with. But when I opened the packet.... I found that I had cleverly repurposed the packet to hold some emergency snacks (gummy bears...). Sigh...
... luckily, I had thought to pack an EXTRA set (I don't normally)... but this was a new brand that I have never tried before. Lighter in colour and texture... not usually a good sign... and it felt much stiffer to tie than the ones that I usually get. Actually, it was quite hard to tie the knot given how stiff the string was...
... well, none of that bodes well for this particular brand... but we will see how it holds up in concert later this evening. Fingers crossed!
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