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Any nylon tapewound fans?

R

Root 5

Nov 25, 2001
3,715
3,296
Ontario Canada
#1
I have to say that nylon tapewounds are my favourite type of string. I love the warm smooth sound only they can deliver. They are not the ideal choice for loud rock or metal but if you play R&B, blues, jazz, motown or lots of ballads - they sound awesome. As a bonus: they are very kind to frets; never had to do any fret work on tape strung basses, the strings last forever - one set I've had on a bass for 20 years and they just sound better!! And your fingers don't get torn up as with roundwounds.

My favourite strings are the GHS tapes and I also like Labella.

Wotcha think? Have you ever tried them??
 
#2
Play La Bella nylons on my passive P bass, they sound great. They have that classic Mo town "thump" and are very easy on the fingers and frets. Not the most versatile string however, it can get hard to cut through the mix if things get a little loud.
 
#6
I have tried the fender tapes and they aren't bad strings. I prefer the GHS & LaBella's because I think they are warmer and smoother sounding. I tried a set of Rotosound tapes but didn't particularly like them but others may think they're awesome.

You're right Boogie8008, tapes are not for loud aggressive styles of music. The tapewound niche is in the styles I mentioned in the opening post.

I'm really surprised more people don't use them. Maybe one of the things that turns people off is that they are black and may conflict with the look of an instrument. I don't know.
 
#7
Yep, love em. I've tried Fender and LaBella tape wounds on my Fender Jazz 5 string and have found the LaBellas to have a little more definition in the note without any loss on the bottom end. Love doing slides with these and they seem to last forever. Only drawback I've encountered to date is that they usually require the nut slot to be filed a little larger than normal roundwound strings so the first time you install some it might be worth taking your bass to a luthier for an install and full set up including nut mod. But the sound is to die for. Creamy, rich, smooth, slathery bottom end with a noticible drop in fret and finger noise and great slides and transtions. These things really do make you sound like a better player. Well worth a try. Have thought about trying them on my fretless Pedulla Pentabuzz bass, but not sure how they'll interact with the hard gloss coated fretboard. Anybody out there tried these on a fretless yet?
 
#8
Another fan of the Status tapewounds, I have the set of my acoustic bass right now. They have broken in to a full smooth tone that van get very woody sounding. Looks like I am getting one of the those Dean Pace basses and I plan to put a set on it.
 
#9
hey thanks for the info. i have a fretless p bass i just got last week. it has round wounds on it and i plan on putting some fender tape wounds on it. i think for 25 bucks they will probably be the best possible match for this bass. unless by a far off chanse my store has some affordable light gauge flats. anyways i should get this done in a day or two and i will try to let you know how it works out .
 
#10
I like the Rotosound Tapes on P-Basses and the LaBellas on Jazz basses. I've tried the Fender roundwound nylon wraps and I thought they sounded fantastic until I started breaking strings. :(

To hear the Rotos, the song bunny on my myspace has them on a P-Bass.

Myspace.com/andrewricemusic
 
#13
I never tried them until a guy here on TB wanted to trade some Fender tapewounds for a set of Fender stainless flats. I had an extra set, and was curious, so I made the swap and have been very pleased. I love the way they sound and feel.

This is a very secondary issue, but I put them on my Geddy, and with the aftermarket black pickguard and the black tapewounds, it really looks nice, as well as sounding better than ever, especially for blues, soul, R&B, etc.
 
#14
fck it i'll copy and paste this from another thread

i just put a set of status-graphite tapewounds on my sx and the tension is really nice, bout the same as you'd find on a medium (105) set of rounds i guess. def. less than the chromes i had on it before. they're also 105/85/65/45 instead of the usually huge tapes you get
 
#19
i think you can order from wwwjuststrings.com and they will ship internationally. also i just put a new set of 70 80 90 100 fender tape's on my fretless p and it sound amazing. it sounds like jaco and it's not eating my fingerboard! i also have a quetion in reference to my new strings. they have a flat wrap on the outside just like a flatwound only nylon yet my old fender's i have on another bass, 58 72 92 110 appear to just be roundwounds with the tape on top. so they feel more like a roundwounds. so what I want to know is. is this a change in fender’s string design or is it that the different sets are just made different? either way I love the strings. just would like to know what’s going on with the different style of windings.
 

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