Cheaper pack of Tobaya silk strings, purchased from Taobao.com

A set of Tobaya silk strings RMB1200 (about US$196) ordered via Taobao just arrived in my mail from 石家庄 (Shijiazhuang) 河北 Hebei province in China. The envelope is highly similar (99.999%) to the other pack which I had ordered directly from Kyoto Japan via Tobaya's website (US$232). The only difference is: the RMB1200 Taobao Tobaya silk strings are packaged shrinkwrapped in airtight plastic. The absolutely genuine US$232 Kyoto Tobaya silk strings directly ordered from Tobaya's website were simply placed inside a small ziplock plastic bag. Does this mean that the this 2nd set of silk strings is also the real McCoy (genuine Tobaya silk strings)? Well, I'd only know after I mount it on my other guqin (an entry level JunTianFang zhongni shaped Tong wood guqin). One of my guqin (also an entry level Guqin made by ZhangYong from Sichuan China) is already mounted with the Tobaya silk strings purchased directly from Tobaya's website. If they both sound the same and have the same signature 'super slinky' high performance, then I'd know the pack from Taobao is probably also genuine.

Update: the Tobaya silk strings from this Taobao shop are also genuine (after comparison to Tobaya silk strings shipped directly from Kyoto Japan). Here is the reliable Taobao webshop I bought from: http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.10.H46oT6&id=20052479090
 

When I collected it from the Singapore-based Taobao agent SgShop.com.sg it came in an "Orange Peeler" box that looked like this. Yeah, I was so surprised that nobody thought it was trash and tossed it into the garbage dumpster! haha

After opening the Orange Peeler box, I saw the courier's unpadded plastic envelope. Probably the Taobao agent www.sgshop.com.sg used the Orange Peeler box to protect the unpadded courier envelope so that it could survive its journey from China to Singapore. Good thinking! Good job taking the initiative! So professional of www.SgShop.com.sg Very eco-friendly too for them to recycle the Orange Peeler box. Excellent!

After opening the gray courier plastic envelope, I saw the Tobaya silk strings' paper envelope.

Inside the paper envelope was an airtight shrinkwrapped set of Tobaya silk strings.
 

 

The piece of black cloth was used as a 'handle' to wrap silk strings around it, so that I could pull it without hurting my hand.

 

The old set of TaiGu silk strings was removed from the guqin.

 

Silk strings can be re-used, so I wrapped each TaiGu silk string using a separate piece of paper and labeled them for storage in the dry box for future use.

After all the new Tobaya silk strings were in position at the RongKou of the guqin, they are ready to be pulled and secured to the goose feet of the guqin. I stood on a very hard mattress together with the guqin. WARNING: Please do not try this on a soft mattress as it may be unstable.

A thoughtful touch by JunTianFang (the maker of this guqin): some rough white cloth material was glued to the goose feet of the guqin to provide a good secure grip on the guqin string. Personally, I have not seen this done by other guqin makers yet.

This is the model of my JunTianFang guqin: You Lan Kong Gu, which has a specific price tag. You can check the prices of all of JunTianFang's guqin on this webpage. This was done by JunTianFang to prevent anyone from inflating the prices of its guqin (not that they're not already inflated. haha)

After all the new Tobaya silk strings were mounted, it is ready for tuning relative to the thickest 1st string. I deliberately left the thickest 1st string un-tuned.
 

I was pleasantly surprised that the 7 strings could be effortlessly tuned relative to C# on thickest 1st string. This was also the same situation on my other guqin which had been mounted with Tobaya strings. In my personal opinion, this is probably because there may be less glue used (compared to more glue used on other brands of guqin silk strings) in the Tobaya silk strings and since silk is so strong, it could be stretched without reaching the point of failure even under very high tension.