Where's the best place to order a 5 string set of pahoehoe strings? I'm in Canada but I'll order from anywhere really.
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Kala UBass Megathread, Part 7
- Thread starter olitoon
- Start date
Order them directly from the creator of the U-bass and strings, Road Toad Music (Owen Holt, Kala license from him).
string_store
I’ve been trying for two years to find strings in EADGC. Answers are sketchy, including from Magnus Sjoquist, their poster boy. I like the ubass and I like it with 5 strings, but with the difficulty in playing above 12th fret, a high C makes a lot more sense to me than a low B. I love the sound, but it’s been bugging me for two years.
As far as I know you can order strings, I did about 6 months ago. It's been a while since Owen replied to one of my emails.
The E string of my Aquila Thunder Reds broke after one year. I decided to try them, I put them on my Exotic Mahogany yesterday evening, so that's just the first impressions.
The strings have a nice sound. With tone setting you can vary from a double-bass-like sound, somewhat similar to the "rubber" strings, to a sound with more highs, but without the squeaky sound when going up and down the keyboard the "rubber" strings have if you aren't careful enough.
They are loud. Maybe even louder than Thunder Reds, which were much louder than the Pahoehoe that came with the bass. The loudness is not perfectly even between the four strings: again, Galli are better than Pahoehoe (for which E was barely audible and G was loud) but slightly worse than Thunder Reds (where loudness was exactly the same in my perception).
Slides are precise, they do not end out-of-tune like the "rubber" strings. The intonation is good. I can't yet confirm what the advertising saying they maintain the tuning: this morning they where almost half tone down. They still have to settle down.
Tension is a little bit higher than what I would have liked (on electric bass I use average tension).
The big downside, at least for me, is that the sustaining is short, very short. The shortest I've ever heard. That's not so bad on open strings, the sound lasts more than five seconds, but as soon as you go down on the keyboard it shortens. It's maybe less than a second on the 7th key. This alone will probably make me buy another set of Thunder Reds, that remain the best strings available in my opinion (if they only solved the stretching issue...).
I recently got a set of the Galli strings. I will install them on my U-Bass SUB. Currently Galli doesn't make a set for the solid bodies but I have a work around that I used on the metal Pyramid strings before they made sets for the solidbodies. My favorite non-metallic strings are the Thunder Reds, no question. On New Years Eve I'll be playing with a big band at a large venue. I'll take my solid mahogany acoustic (2010 model) with Thunder Reds and my SUB with the Galli strings. It will be interesting to see how the Galli strings compare.
I bought the red one of those Journeyman online from Zorro Sounds about six weeks ago, discounted for a blem on the back. It came with the Kala metal round wound, which I don't like at all so I changed them to a set of Thunderguts I had on hand (to match the binding). In both cases the A string rattled badly.New acquisition:
I took it to a Sam Ash repair guy who worked on it for a few days, replaced the nut, added a shim, but couldn't get rid of the rattle. He took out a natural Journeyman (like yours) they had in stock and it did exactly the same thing. Guess my next step is to take it to Kala.
I had a Kala u-bass with the spruce soundboard years ago. It too had the A string rattle and buzz. Only on the open A. I put a piece of tightly folded paper in the nut slot for that string and it stopped the rattle. But it would fall out after a bit and needed to be redone regularly.
I imagine having the nut slot properly raised would have done the trick, but I sold it and was without a ubass for a few years till I saw this style. Mine does no have that issue.
You might try what I did to see if a nut slot build up would help.
My rattle and buzz was only when I played the A open. I also remember that pressing down on the string behind the nut would silence the rattle. But I would think the shim should've worked.......sorry to hear this, they are nice but I remember being frustrated by the rattle and hum!!!
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Your problem sounds like a nut slot cut too low. I'd expect any luthier could find and fix that quickly. Mike's story sounds a little more complicated. Will be interested in hearing Kala's take.
If pressing on the string behind the nut eliminates the rattle, then the string is not being pulled down in the nut. Adding a string tree would certainly fix the problem. It seems obvious, but since it hasn’t been mentioned, wrapping the A string so it goes to the bottom of the post will pull the string down in the slot as far as possible and may fix the problem.
Yes I forgot that part - many wraps to bring string tension down - that alone did not help. I am sure that in my case had I built up the nut slot the issue would have resolved. But like I said, I sold it - it was an early model, no tuner or pre-amp. I sold it in anticipation of getting one with a pre. I waited long and so far am glad I did. I am happy with the Journeyman. Looks, build, sound. Quite nice.
Now that you have a U-Bass with a preamp, how important do you think it is? I have a Hutch Hutchinson model that I’m happy with but it does not have a preamp. I haven’t thought I needed a pre, but maybe I’m missing out.
