| Well, if the sound of rounds is what you hear, then use them. My untreated rosewood fingerboard lasted about seven years with variouis stainless and nickel rounds on it. And replacing the board with a thick chunk of ebony only cost about $150 and it's lasted about 13 years with only a light buffing of steel wool once a year.
My point is to choose your strings for the sound needed and accept the wear. If flats are the sound you like that's a good reason to use them. But to avoid wear on an instrument but accept a compromise in sound defeats the purpose of making the sound in the first place.
"Needless" is the critical factor. And for the sound that attracts many people to fretless in the first place, it's round wound strings. You can avoid needless wear by maintaining a light touch with the both hands, by avoiding side-to-side vibrato, and by experimenting with different strings. I know Jaco used Rotosound RS-66, which have a deadly and deserved reputation for being very abrasive (hard stainless alloy and a coarse outer wrap). But I've found other stainless rounds that work well for the sound but aren't nearly as abrasive. My fretless has also had TI flats, GHS Precision flats, and GHS Brite-Flats (a moddified roundwound), but for my music it's gotta be rounds.
jte
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JTE
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"Without space, music is just noise piling up on itself." TRK
Lakland Owners' Club # 248
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That said, I love half-rounds on fretless. I have them on my 6 but I don't think they make a high F or low F#.
