String Gauge For An 8?

[KeithAlanK]

Just picked up a Rogue 8 string for $180 New (Pawn Shop, but it's obviously new) with a Fender tweed case.
Always wanted an 8 and never thought I could afford one, so I'm pretty stoked.
It's actually a surprisingly nice instrument for the price, with Grover tuners and a flame maple topped basswood body, maple neck, rosewood fingerboard + brass nut, and active electronics with 3-band EQ. Fat pole-pieces on a single coil and a humbucker.
The truss rod needed a lot more tension, but now it plays really nice.
First thing I did when it was handed to me in the store was flip it over and check for a battery compartment--active electronics was a must since my other recording and stage bass is an Ibanez with Bartolini's, and I didn't want to have to deal with drastic level changes. My MIM Jazz is for emergency backup only.

According to my cheap calipers the E is .095, which seems light but I guess you don't want to use anything heavier since the added guitar strings tuned rather tight add quite a bit of tension to the neck.
Does this sound right?

What gauge bass strings do you use on your 8?
And how about the octave strings?
.042-.016?

Thanks for any advice you can give me.

[knuckle_head]

Half the gauges on a standard set - might want to go a bit lighter on the plains

[Bassman316]

I have a Brice octave 8 which is pretty similar to the Rogue 8. I had the same Rogue 8 (same color, too) that you do years ago, but things got a little tight and I had to sell it. Didn't even have it long enough to have to change the strings. The Brice 8 that I have now is a 35" scale thru-body bass, so finding a set of extra long scale strings for an octave 8 wasn't coming up very fruitful. In the end, I bought a set of standard D'Addario XL 8-string nickel wounds and used the high octave strings from that set and then bought a standard 4-string light gauge set of XL nickel wounds for the bass strings. Bascially blended the two sets together, and used the spare bass strings from the 8-string set on another bass. I found that the octave strings in the 8-string set were long enough to make the 35" scale, but the bass strings were not (the strings were tapering down about a 1/8" in front of the nut on the fretboard side), hence the need to grab a 4-string set of light extra long scales. All in all, a probably very stupid way to re-string my bass, but at the time I couldn't think of anything else.

Hope you enjoy your bass. Even if Rogue doesn't make the best basses in the world, that 8-string I had was a damn good bass. If I remember right, I picked it up from Musician's Friend for $189. To this day I still kick myself from letting it go. I was that into it...

[CopperheadLXXIX]

Medium to light gauge strings are usually pretty ideal. When I'm getting a set for an 8er or 12ver I usually go to juststrings.com and buy singles-bit more expensive maybe, but it makes it easier to match tension from string to string, especially the octaves.

Really I would say to experiment though-at one point I had extra heavy strings on a Dean Rhapsody 8 (The E was .110 I believe). I kept it tuned that way for at least a few months, and the neck was no worse for wear afterward.

[Hoover]

I usually just buy a set of D'Addario XL-8's since they're the only 8-string set I've routinely found in stock at Sam Ash, GC, practically any MI store.
see http://www.juststrings.com/dad-exl170-8.html for the guages

But if I'm doing a project that uses a lot of 8-string bass, I'll swap out the unwound octave G that comes with that D'Addario set for a wound ~.020 or .022. Less like barbed wire on the fingertips.