Heavy presence on flatwounds??

Bass. · #1 07-01-2006, 11:37 PM

i recently purchased a new bass. It came with flatwounds on it and it's fretted. while i was playing it it had too much of a bassy presence in almost any sound (except that really gritty metal-to-metal sound).
it sounded almost semi-hollowish at times.
TO MY QUESTION! :
are flatwounds on a fretted naturally full of bass presence? or was it just something with the bass?

dukerutledge · #2 07-01-2006, 11:42 PM

my guess is its the flats. Flatwounds will give you a very bottomy vintage thump, especially on a fretted.

the_luke · #3 07-03-2006, 09:06 PM

Flats on my SRX500 were definitely more boomy than rounds... so I just rolled the bass EQ off a little. It's not hard to compensate with equalisation.

emblymouse · #4 07-03-2006, 09:29 PM

Yeah, thats the flats for ya.
I like to think of it this way- a string produces X amount of energy/sound. In the case of flats, whats not coming through in the form of high harmonics is being released in the low range. It's gotta go somewhere! Rounds don't have that thick bottom, they're busy ringing all those highs all over the place.
I don't know if this is really true but it makes sense to me based on the 'there exists a finite amount of energy in the universe' theory.

Sorry, I'm done now.