Felt

[BassNoob1]

Does the felt on the ends of strings actually do anything? I've heard it stops buzz and helps them grip the tuners, but then I've also heard they don't do anything and it's just for string identification.

[prd004]

Actually it's silk, not felt. It is suppose to help grip the tuners. Weather or not I believed this, I didn't know until Mike Lull told me so, good enough for me!

[JTE]

Doesn't really do anything, or else there'd be no strings without it. And lots of strings don't have any silk on them. It might have helped keep strings together before there was consistent winding available, and it MIGHT keep hardware from getting scratched (though you'd have to be pretty anal to worry about whether the strings leave a mark on the barrel of your tuning machines). Mostly it identifies stuff now, like D'Addario used to do with the silk on the Slo-Wounds, or trying to pin down a brand (e.g. the peculiar red that GHS used on Boomers).

John

[darkstorm]

Its purpose is to make strings look more I dunno, finished, fancier, high scale, just asthetics thing. Lol.

[Oceanstrat]

So, taking it off won't do anything? I just tried putting new flats through my badass bridge and they didn't even come close to fitting through at the end. The silk winding made the string too thick at the bottom end..