Schraffed bass strings

[Joel Rappaport]

Want to complicate this further?  We have experience making bass strings
in Germany and Austria and make the bass strings here at home for our
own rebuilding projects.  We have always called roughing up the core
wire before spinning the copper onto it, "kratzen" which is German for
scratching.  I never heard of schraffing until it was offered as an
option here in the USA.  Ron Torrella's research into the etymology is
very enlightening, but I never heard those German terms in Europe.

As David Sanderson pointed out, roughing up the core is to help the
copper grab onto the core during spinning.  There are other factors
which would cause dead strings and those must be taken into
consideration.

The schraffing or "kratzen" of the core, in my opinion, plays absolutely
no role in whether you twist the bass string (ALWAYS in the direction of
the winding, BTW).  Our procedure is one full twist for the singles, two
full twists for the doubles and triples (to clarify:  this does not
refer to the number of copper layers, but the number of strings in the
unison).

Hope this helps.

Joel Rappaport
Round Rock, Texas