Birth of Roundwounds

[p0werslav3]

It's probably been discussed but I couldn't find a thread so here's my question:

When were roundwound strings first introduced and started to be used mainstream?

I've read that supposedly John Entwhistle helped in designing the first roundwounds, but don't know if that's accurate or not.

So are we talking late 60s, early 70s?

[JTE]

I'd say there were roundwounds for a lot longer than they were popular. While Fender, Gibson, and Rickenbacker all shipped their basses with flats (Fender until 1983, I don't know about the others because I didn't care about their basses in those days), Danelectro shipped with rounds as I understand it. And given the very guitar-centric nature of electric bass, it's not a stretch at all to see big guitar strings being made.

Yes, Entwistle helped James Howe refine the development of the Rotosound rounds, but he never asserted that he (Entwistle) invented ROUNDWOUNDS. It's just that for a long time, Rotosound rounds were the only ones anyone knew about. I beleive that Fender had a nickle roundwound set of bass strings in the catalog before 1969 (I think it was a '67 catalog I had that listed them).

They certainly didn't become well known enough nor widely distrubuted unitl the early '70s however. When I started managing a guitar store in 1977, there was still only one Rotosound distributor in the US, and our COST for RS-66 was around $20 at the time. The exposure from Chris Squire, Stanley Clarke, Roger Glover, and Entwistle fuelel the appeal of Rotosound in particular. GHS's aggresive advertising of Boomers upped the ante quite a bit, and the popularity of slap 'n' pop from Larry Graham (although the Sly & The Family Stone stuff was flats) and Louis Johnson added more fuel to the change.

John

[fretlessguy]

I have read that Danelectro had rounds developed for their instuments to take advatage of those pups they used. Don't know if it is true or not. I have also heard that Rotosound created them for John Entwistle. It could be a case of a concept being developed at many places at the same time....sort of like the bow and arrow.

[One Drop]

In their marketing material Rotosound is vague about the origins, but from what i could glean they had a roundwound set available from the early '60s. Entwistle spent a day at the factory helping to develop the set that became known as the Swingbass 66, which were the ones that became widely used and lead to the big uptake of rounds.

AFAIK the only other set at the time were the skinny Danos they shipped, but there might have been other manufactorers with rounds available on a small scale.