Acoustic bass strings on an electric?

[JeffVanter]

I was considering trying this. Has anyone ever heard of doing such a thing and can tell me what the tone is like? I'm going for a very organic sound. Unfortunately, I do not have the money to purchase a beautiful acoustic bass that would be above $500 (something that is worth the money.) I could go out and buy a cheap acoustic bass, but that leaves us with regret later on and a lot of problems to fix. More money is usually involved when you could have just bought something more expensive with no problems at all!

If anyone has tried this, can you tell me what the tone is? Would your PUPs pick up the sound and project beautifully and organically through an amp? I recently watched a Stanely Clarke video and I must say that I was obsessed with the acoustic tone. Thank you.

 

[harmendebresser]

As in, upright bass strings?! You're going to wreck the instrument...
If you mean, nylon core bronze wound acoustic bassguitar strings it's not going to work without a piezo...
If you want an upright kind of sound, I suggest tapewound strings.

 

[SirMjac28]

You can find plenty of good acoustics in the sub $500.00 range I wouldn't give up that search just yet.

 

[lz4005]

If you tried to put 42" scale upright bass strings on a 34" scale electric bass one or more of them would probably break when you tried to wrap them around the tuner post. The silk on the ball end would also extend far past the bridge saddle, making them impossible to intonate.

If you somehow got around those two problems, magnetic pickups would indeed generate a signal off of metal upright strings. They wouldn't sound like an upright bass.

 

[JustForSport]

I've entertained this idea also-
Steel-core acoustic (and acoustic/elec) bass string sets (34") may work, just don't have the volume of magnetically active wrappings that typical electric bass strings do
(but then, neither do nylon tape-wounds of a given diameter). They need the mass to vibrate/oscillate at pitch- just may need a volume boost at the amp???
Sort-of like light gauge strings magnetically, but higher mass?

 

[bryan gibson]

This may sound stupid at first, but give it a try.... cheapo guitar modeler/processer/multi thingee with an acoustic simulator. You can pick up a used Digitech RP unit for forty bux or so, and tweak away at the settings...