After years of daydreaming, I bought my first Stingray early this year, a lefty trans orange SR5 with a rosewood board and black pearloid pickguard. It's a one piece body and has a gorgeous neck. The bass is pretty much my dream bass.
So the slinky's that came with the bass were of course new, shiny and very zingy and I was for the most part enjoying them. After the initial honeymoon period of having the bass, I did begin to realize that the .45 G string was a little thin for my tastes although the 130 B string is fantastic.
I have limited funds and knew I would have to do some research to find a string set would satisfy me. I was all set after lots of research to buy a set of DR Lowriders in the med guage.
I have used Blue Steels (50-128) on my Yamaha 5'r for yrars and always loved the tone. In fact, Blue Steels have always been my string of choice and always seem to come back to them. I was determined to try something else this time.
Turns out, No one stocks DR's strings around here and as Ernie ball only makes one guage size of 5 string bass stings, I ended up with a new set of Blue Steel mediums.....again. haha
Anyway, I strung up my SR5 2 days ago and I immediately was taken a back by how dull looking they were compared to the old Slinkies which were still shiny although pretty dead sounding. The whole bass had to be re set up as for some reason my action was now way too high.
After setting uo the action and intonation, I was able to finally try them out and I was immediately blown away by the growl and gorgeous mids that were suddenly present. The bass sounded completely different in a good way. Gone was the slightly thin over the top bright tone I had come to expect from the bass in parrallel mode with the eq set flat.
The Blue Steels are bright for sure, rough on the fingers and dull looking in appearance but, I was so pleased with the growl and increased mids, that I felt like I had a new bass again.
The other big difference unfortunately was the B string which is a 128 as opposed to the Slinky 130, just doesnt seem to cut it on this bass. The B feels sloppy and dead. Playing any notes on this string even up high are dull and lifeless. I wonder if I simply got a bad B string as the same exact string on my Yamaha sounds fantastic. i was quite dissapointed in the tone of the B string on the Stingray but the overal tone of the rest of the set is a huge improvement over the stock strings.
So in the end, I still really want to try DR Lowriders (SS) but despite a killer B string, I dont think I could go back to Slinkys on the SR5 after hearing all the growl anyone could ever want with the Blue Steels.
Sorry for the long winded post but I thought this may be of interest to other TB'ers.
Crabby
