Balanced Vs. Unbalanced tension

[madbassplaya]

This has never really been a problem for me, but I am curious to try a set of balanced strings.

For those of you who have tried both, how do you feel about them? Do you now prefer a balanced set or do the standard gauges work for you?

 

[ixlramp]

Your intuition is telling you to try a balanced set, you should follow your intuition
I much prefer balanced over traditional tension, it was an instrument enlightenment for me. Now i've moved on to 'reverse progressive tension', where the tension falls consistently from lowest to highest string, the opposite of traditinal tension.

 

[FunkMetalBass]

When I originally tried Circle K's, my goal wasn't to balance the tension, it was really just to get strings for a heavier low end, and balanced tension was a interesting side-effect. I was very pleasantly surprised with what I heard and felt on my strings, and the balanced tension was a godsend. I've devoted numerous spreadsheets to creating balanced tension sets for every potential tuning I might use.

Try it out. There are very few people on these boards who have tried balanced tension and switched back. That must be some sort of indication that it's not just a gimmick.

 

[cassius987]

I first started making my own balanced sets when D'Addario set numbers (they publish them on the packaging) revealed big variances. By the time Circle K came along I had already been making my own balanced sets out of singles for a year or so. They make it a lot more convenient for me now, and it's cheaper.

Some of the "standard" sets aren't bad but a lot are kind of ridiculous how the D string is so taut, and the E string so loose. There are historical reasons for this but they are no longer relevant today. I could never go back to a standard set now because I'm so used to each string feeling and sounding evenly.

Interestingly Rickenbacker ships their basses with fairly well-balanced strings--much better than most at least--and that set was my favorite before I started making my own.

 

[Thunder Pulse]

Some of the "standard" sets aren't bad but a lot are kind of ridiculous how the D string is so taut, and the E string so loose. There are historical reasons for this but they are no longer relevant today.

I thought the same thing when I saw the tension numbers D'Addario published and I've never understood the imbalance between the strings. You say there are historical reasons for it though. I've never heard that... what are they?

 

[FunkMetalBass]

I thought the same thing when I saw the tension numbers D'Addario published and I've never understood the imbalance between the strings. You say there are historical reasons for it though. I've never heard that... what are they?

Old amp technology was quite poor compared to today. Low note reproduction wasn't there, so to compensate, the low E-strings were designed to be thinner so that they would vibrate with a larger amplitude and thus be louder. As Skip/knuckle_head put it, "it was like EQing with strings."

 

[Thunder Pulse]

Old amp technology was quite poor compared to today.

Are you talking about the 50's? The 60's? We've had good bass amps for decades. It seems awfully ridiculous that string manufacturers haven't changed with the times.

 

[FunkMetalBass]

Are you talking about the 50's? The 60's? We've had good bass amps for decades. It seems awfully ridiculous that string manufacturers haven't changed with the times.

Where was the need? They had a system that worked and made them money. "If it aint broke, don't fix it." I think the want/need to pump out anything lower than a B at typical scale lengths is really what pushed it.

 

[knuckle_head]

It isn't the amps - it's the speaker enclosures.

I think you might find the greatest benefit to balanced tension strings is in the studio where direct-to-board or DAW give you no place to hide.

I was a jingle studio assistant and engineer in a past life (been recording music since 1975), and the stacks of gear necessary to rein in bass always astounded me.

 

[walterw]

Old amp technology was quite poor compared to today. Low note reproduction wasn't there, so to compensate, the low E-strings were designed to be thinner so that they would vibrate with a larger amplitude and thus be louder. As Skip/knuckle_head put it, "it was like EQing with strings."

thinner bass strings are louder than thicker ones?

also, thinner strings vibrate over a wider arc than thicker ones?

 

[ixlramp]

... the low E-strings were designed to be thinner so that they would vibrate with a larger amplitude and thus be louder.

I can imagine the lower tension lets the string flop about more, the extra 'flop' going mainly to the lowest harmonics, increasing their amplitudes, creating a more boomy fundamental-heavy tone

 

[knuckle_head]

Old amp technology was quite poor compared to today. Low note reproduction wasn't there, so to compensate, the low E-strings were designed to be thinner so that they would vibrate with a larger amplitude and thus be louder. As Skip/knuckle_head put it, "it was like EQing with strings."

thinner bass strings are louder than thicker ones?

also, thinner strings vibrate over a wider arc than thicker ones?

I'd suggest that lower tension as opposed to thinner was the accepted approach. But to get to lower tension, thinner it would have to be. Lower tension strings are more free to move and are indeed louder as a result, hence the required adjustment to playing technique on E and B strings.

I can imagine the lower tension lets the string flop about more, the extra 'flop' going mainly to the lowest harmonics, increasing their amplitudes, creating a more boomy fundamental-heavy tone

Lower tension inhibits harmonics, especially if they are played with a lighter touch. This is especially glaring when a loose string is a part of an overall much tighter remainder of a set.

 

[FunkMetalBass]

I'd suggest that lower tension as opposed to thinner was the accepted approach. But to get to lower tension, thinner it would have to be. Lower tension strings are more free to move and are indeed louder as a result, hence the required adjustment to playing technique on E and B strings.



Lower tension inhibits harmonics, especially if they are played with a lighter touch. This is especially glaring when a loose string is a part of an overall much tighter remainder of a set.

You're right - "thinner" is not necessarily synonymous with "less tension", as could be the case. My bad!

 

[John D Harris]

Why do threads like this go zombie?

 

[walterw]

Why do threads like this go zombie?

because people stop posting in them?

anyway, 5 years later i'm a fan of the balanced tension thing myself, or at least a reasonable approximation of it.

the d'addario balanced set is 45-60-80-107; i play ernie ball cobalts myself, and EB doesn't do in-between gauges, so i just put together singles at 45-60-80-110, which is close enough, especially since i'm going dropped D often enough.

i kinda stopped thinking about it, the strings just all feel "even" to me.

 

[walterw]

as to why they're unbalanced to begin with (overly tight D and A strings) the story i was told is that it was to compensate for flat-poled jazz bass pickups on sharp-radius jazz basses, where the G and E would be too hot compared to the middle two, so they made the middle two bigger to compensate.

 

[John D Harris]

I contacted D'Addario about a 5 string BT set & they told me I could add a single B to a BT 4 string set.
I'm thinking about just going with Kalium.

 

[iiipopes]

In the early '90's, decades before "balanced" became a catch-word, I didn't like the feel of the middle strings, D-65 and A-85, on the standard set of 45-105 Boomers. Too tight. So I did the math, and realized that, given the same or similar construction from string to string, that the 60 and 80 might feel more like the 45 and 105. It did.

Right about the same time, GHS introduced its then-new string, the Progressives, with the "52" alloy that had more iron, less nickel in the wrap alloy. That also fixed the tendency of my low E string to thump prematurely, since my hand perspiration tends to eat nickel.

I asked if they could be ordered in singles, which they could, and so for over two decades I have been ordering "balanced" 45-60-80-105 GHS Progressive Singles for my Rickenbacker 4002 (that's right - "2," not "1" or "3").

Now, "everybody" has a tension chart so you can compare. And after all these years, the numbers bear out what the strings felt like then and now.

 

[shawshank72]

I always wondered why I couldn't be comfortable playing most sets.
Then I found out about balanced tension and I just can't play anything else no matter how much I try.
50/65/85/110 is pure heaven.
Although it sucks that it restricts me to what I will use for flats.
Fortunately Ernie Ball is my favourite and does singles.

 

[michael_t]

I'm with @iiipopes on this.

After a lot of experimenting, I've come to the conclusion that what works best for me is 45-60-80-105, or something as closed to it as possible.

My current top-three favorites:

• Fender Flats 9050CL (45-60-80-105)
• La Bella Flats 760FL (43-60-82-104)
• GHS Pressurewound ML7200 (44-58-80-102)