Terry,
    Your solution is even simpler than you thought. When you have lost
the bass strings, just make a large paper pattern using Kraft roll
paper or butcher paper-- something heavy. You mark the position of each
agraffe, stab the paper into the pins on the bridge and into the
hitches so that you can make a carbon pattern of some kind. Then just
draw in the details, as well as the number of strings and the number of
single, double wound pairs (sometimes you have a few more wound strings
in the tenor section). Send it to someone like Mapes String Co in
Elizabethton, TN, and you'll have your brand new strings in a few
weeks.  :-)

Craig B.

craig_brougher@msn.com