BillyG said
LOL - some good time back I actually got ( second hand, but with a known only a few hours of playing ) Larsen Virtuoso's - I'd heard so much about them....    Well - I couldn't play them....   OK - I exaggerate... a bit....  I could play them, and without doubt - they had a sweet sound - but - I think it was the lower tension - with my fat fingers an adjacent string to a fingered-stopped string would resonate and "buzz" against my fingenail.....   NOTHING wrong with the strings - I'm just not good enough a player yet to take advantage of them !   Hahahaha 

My current strings of choice are ( in no particular order ) The FiddlerMan set, Dominants, Zyex and yes - even cheap steels like Preludes ( and unbranded ) - just for gritty fiddle stuff....  they would never work for me for anything other than fiddle tunes...   Also, whatever string set I use ( on the fiddle ) I usually swap out the E for a different type - usually a D'Addario Kaplan Gold for a number of reasons....  but that's just me.  We're all different...

The "String Quest" is really interesting actually.   The same instrument can change totally (OK, I'll re-phrase that - maybe not totally - but it IS more than a subtle change - it is noticeable ) with different strings, and, as I have found, sometimes that warrants shifting the sound post position VERY SLIGHTLY - even the bridge position as well (laterally, usually, in the sense of slightly towards the bass bar - not vertically along its length ) - and again - we're talking millimeters here...  interesting...  

Interesting post.  My last strings were Larson Virtuosos (with a Kaplan E).  I really liked those strings, but eventually they died.  I replaced them with the Fiddlerman strings.  You mentioned the Larson strings as being low tension.  Personally, I feel like the Fiddlerman strings are VERY low tension, much lower than the Larson strings. My hands are large and probably more suited for heavy guitar strings than for playing a violin, so it's taking some effort to get accustomed to them. I presume that if I ever got decent at this instrument, I'd buy my strings as singles since I don't like the sound of at least one string in every brand I've tried and the only E string that I think that sounds good is the Kaplan (non-whistling)  wound string.  So I'd probably go with something like the Larson G and D, the Obligato A and the Kaplan E, but that might not work since the Larson strings seem to have more projection than any strings I've tried and it could end up being very unbalanced volume-wise.  So who knows.