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Anybody having problems with Thomastik Jazz flats & rounds?
- Thread starter akori
- Start date
Pier_: Such a bummer to have problems like that from DR! I was so happy with them like ten years ago. But Then again, I could go at least 6 months without string changes, because this is dry country and my hands rarely sweat. So I wasn't exactly buying a lot of High Beams. I wouldn't doubt that compositions and QC could change over such a span. It seems to me DR dropped their prices over the last decade. That doesn't exactly conform with inflation and higher material costs. It makes one wonder..
I know! even for a guy who demands super low action and the slinkiest strings, TIs just seemed alien...impossible at first. I played a set at a boutique store, and thought they were amazing, but I spontaneously laughed, like "no way." Then I got a set of flats. It took months and many restrings to just learn their ways, and it got better from there, until they were all I'd play. The switch to their Jazz rounds was very rewarding, although (and this is the first time I've ever encountered this), They do tend to be relatively unstable (granted, they're so light and springy, it may be inevitable). But I rarely had to ever tune on stage with typical .045 to 1.05 steel or steel/ nickel strings. I will have a nice test tomorrow at an outdoor gig of a couple hours...probably be raining locusts and hail or something. I'll try them on a fretless and a Warwick FNA Jazzman 5...We shall see. Oops, I mean today. Time to get to bed!
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You're lucky that TI responded to your problem. I had a G string that unraveled itself(from the middle of the string) a few days after stringing up, and they didn't respond to either of my emails. I can't buy another set from them due to that experience.
This is a very good point. TI Flats have silk thread in their core. I imagine that breaking that relatively delicate part of the string internally would change the nature of the string completely. I would think that it would have a deadening effect.
THanks! This is worth careful consideration. While I definitely feel (as in tactile perception) that stretched strings are looser, I have always wondered if they might be surprisingly delicate when pulled on. ICan't go wrong with these strings… unless you're loving them to death. There may be silk in there. That's worth remembering.
I have this for you, from Acoustic Masters, regarding 'stretching in,' if this helps. Helped me no end.
I believe the whole article, by Terry Relph-Knight, which is in two parts, is well worth going over, even though the focus is on the acoustic side of (strings) things. Links follow,
http://www.acousticmasters.com/AcousticMasters_Strings1.htm
and
http://www.acousticmasters.com/AcousticMasters_Strings2.htm
TI Jazz rounds are, IMO, much better for fretless than the flats--well-defined pitch reminiscent of the Spirocores on my upright and the very fine wrap is easy on the fingerboard.
By the way, as a materials scientist I probably should note that metals are in general very elastic (doesn't mean stretchy, means able to store and return energy via deformation); however, complex wrapped structures can be subject to internal friction that makes some "settling in" as fine wires realign under stress possible, indeed likely. Overtension to achieve this realignment seems unwise as it's likely to damage fine substructures. Patience probably works best.
By the way, as a materials scientist I probably should note that metals are in general very elastic (doesn't mean stretchy, means able to store and return energy via deformation); however, complex wrapped structures can be subject to internal friction that makes some "settling in" as fine wires realign under stress possible, indeed likely. Overtension to achieve this realignment seems unwise as it's likely to damage fine substructures. Patience probably works best.
It's a great pleasure!
Terry's insights into stretching strings stopped me dead in my tracks, pretty much. And my experience supports his case. The part about damaging the instrument in the process rocked me the most - stopped me dead in my tracks - but his whole argument is pretty sound - pardon the pun. String elasticity, a desirable characteristic in a well made string, will most likely to be undermined by pre-stretching, not enhanced, and the useful life of a string may be diminished - the term he uses, in the pejorative, is 'plastic deformation' - to be avoided at all cost. I write this with some confidence, recognizing now the veracity of the science involved. It really does help explain things - and sustain things.
I humbly submit, my experiments paid off. And my acoustics are now safe from harm. Terry's point, that most winding posts are engineered to lock a string in place, is a salient one. Come to terms with yours - different brands and different styles have different mechanisms. Learn how they're meant to work. Let a good number of well guided winds - that is, winds wrapped around the post and never ever overlapping the string - and, consequently, you'll have the ideal string.
The peg is already doing one hell of a job of pulling and 'stretching,' all on its lonesome - better than we could ever do. Doing it this way, you still get some give but, surprisingly, very little, and that will be dependent now on the nature and quality of the string, not the installation.
My focus on the silk inside is conjectural - my own potted philosophy - but it seems to me that, while silk is extremely strong, it's used primarily to enhance the tone of these wonderful strings. So I'm thinking, there may be a correlation between a breakdown of the silk and tone loss.
The likely culprit would probably be some kind of contamination. Even just sweat and sebum - with all the associated acid compounds, salts, etc. - is going to transform the environment inside the string, if you're not careful, and will most likely cause some kind of damage to the silk. Add to that, anything wet, used to clean or lubricate the strings and the fingerboard - which is universally not such a good idea, string wise, and only sensible sometimes, during a string set change, neck wise - Under these conditions, a string's tone is going to suffer.
But if the silk actually rots as a result, that may be your best lead if you're seeking an answer to that tone problem. I hope I'm right. Then it would just be a matter of wiping the little darlings down with a clean, highly absorbent, dry cloth - thoroughly and often - and letting the pegs themselves do all the stretching for you. These strings have an exceptionally long lifespan, given an ideal environment.
I do love Terry Relph-Knight's, More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Strings. It's a rare concentration of good, solid information that goes a long way towards steering the debate in more sensible, and more profitable directions.
The sections, on; tone, scale length and picking position; materials; metal string construction; string winding; and hex cores versus round cores, are particularly practical and informative. And, then there's the sections on the history of strings, and catgut strings. Fascinating!. The whole thing's a great read but - getting pretty technical at times - not everybody's cup of tea. Pick the eyes out of it.
Thanks for the excellent thread y'all. Good luck with your adventures.
jmlee:
Thanks for that info. Also, I couldn't agree more, though TI flats are really a treat as far as flats go, I do prefer the Ti rounds. They just rule. Faster attack is the biggest reason I like them. And then again, it's hard to sound modern and edgy with flats; Even TI flats have what I feel as a hollowness, as compared to rounds.
It's a great pleasure!
Terry's insights into stretching strings stopped me dead in my tracks, pretty much. And my experience supports his case. The part about damaging the instrument in the process rocked me the most - stopped me dead in my tracks - but his whole argument is pretty sound - pardon the pun. String elasticity, a desirable characteristic in a well made string, will most likely to be undermined by pre-stretching, not enhanced, and the useful life of a string may be diminished - the term he uses, in the pejorative, is 'plastic deformation' - to be avoided at all cost. I write this with some confidence, recognizing now the veracity of the science involved. It really does help explain things - and sustain things.
I humbly submit, my experiments paid off. And my acoustics are now safe from harm. Terry's point, that most winding posts are engineered to lock a string in place, is a salient one. Come to terms with yours - different brands and different styles have different mechanisms. Learn how they're meant to work. Let a good number of well guided winds - that is, winds wrapped around the post and never ever overlapping the string - and, consequently, you'll have the ideal string.
The peg is already doing one hell of a job of pulling and 'stretching,' all on its lonesome - better than we could ever do. Doing it this way, you still get some give but, surprisingly, very little, and that will be dependent now on the nature and quality of the string, not the installation.
My focus on the silk inside is conjectural - my own potted philosophy - but it seems to me that, while silk is extremely strong, it's used primarily to enhance the tone of these wonderful strings. So I'm thinking, there may be a correlation between a breakdown of the silk and tone loss.
The likely culprit would probably be some kind of contamination. Even just sweat and sebum - with all the associated acid compounds, salts, etc. - is going to transform the environment inside the string, if you're not careful, and will most likely cause some kind of damage to the silk. Add to that, anything wet, used to clean or lubricate the strings and the fingerboard - which is universally not such a good idea, string wise, and only sensible sometimes, during a string set change, neck wise - Under these conditions, a string's tone is going to suffer.
But if the silk actually rots as a result, that may be your best lead if you're seeking an answer to that tone problem. I hope I'm right. Then it would just be a matter of wiping the little darlings down with a clean, highly absorbent, dry cloth - thoroughly and often - and letting the pegs themselves do all the stretching for you. These strings have an exceptionally long lifespan, given an ideal environment.
I do love Terry Relph-Knight's, More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About Strings. It's a rare concentration of good, solid information that goes a long way towards steering the debate in more sensible, and more profitable directions.
The sections, on; tone, scale length and picking position; materials; metal string construction; string winding; and hex cores versus round cores, are particularly practical and informative. And, then there's the sections on the history of strings, and catgut strings. Fascinating!. The whole thing's a great read but - getting pretty technical at times - not everybody's cup of tea. Pick the eyes out of it.
Thanks for the excellent thread y'all. Good luck with your adventures.
Yeah, this is a good set of assumptions to challenge; it shakes up our time-tested beliefs, but we (may) have been operating on the suggestions of others we trust, who may have just listened to others, etc. Plus, there's those inconsistent concepts about stretching...I swear stretching makes the string slinkier...I SWEAR it. But this is counterintuitive. And I've no doubt tugging on a string at a right angle to it's travel seems risky at best. And if I've been inflicting subtle damage to sets over the years, and just making up for it with brilliant technique (!)
then I'm selling myself and the music short. Time to challenge the paradigm. Lovely that the economy is so bad for a career music teacher...I used to just by a big ol' shipment of strings at a time. Now, I'm like: uh...Thomastiks or food this month?Brilliantly put, akori.Yeah, this is a good set of assumptions to challenge; it shakes up our time-tested beliefs, but we (may) have been operating on the suggestions of others we trust, who may have just listened to others, etc. Plus, there's those inconsistent concepts about stretching...I swear stretching makes the string slinkier...I SWEAR it. But this is counterintuitive. And I've no doubt tugging on a string at a right angle to it's travel seems risky at best. And if I've been inflicting subtle damage to sets over the years, and just making up for it with brilliant technique (!)
We're lucky things aren't always set in concrete or we'd never be going anywhere and there would be nothing much to look forward to. Holding some beliefs tentatively does cushion the blow. And learning - well! there's no greater joy in my book. Fossicking around for an exemplum for visualizing pre-stretching, look at how a wire coat-hanger behaves when it's being bent and broken. That experiment seems to flesh these ideas out pretty well - under repeated flexing, the wire first gets really hot, and then gets really stiff, and then it will fail completely and snap like a twig. All this happens at the molecular level. Very hard to detect, except the heating part which can be quite vivid if you touch the hot spot. But the outcome is plain enough - failure due to 'plastic deformation.'
Maybe I'm wrong. And I wouldn't mind in the slightest if I was. But I've learned something at least, particularly where preserving the integrity of my blessed bridges is concerned. And, as a rule, I don't break strings these days. So that can't be a bad thing. And while this is all about doing what's best, it's an exercise in saving money too.
I also favor older strings and, practically, this too helps the bottom line. Call me a cheapskate 
I don' mind. It's all part of the adventure.
Yes. I have TI jazz wounds & just wrote a thread about them. I certainly do have mixed feelings about them. What I find problematic is that my upper two strings g & c are a bit twangy but have a nice transient snap to them & are well defined. Those two strings have way more tension in them than the others. EQing them by boosting 250hz (8db) & 500 hz (6db) does make their timbre closer to that of the other strings. However, the well defined, transient snappiness is still there even when the EQing is in effect, so those two strings still don't integrate with the others too well.
Conversely, the lowest strings have very little tension, they are not well defined, and lack that speedy snappy response. I know that low notes invariably "speak" more slowly, but the differences both in timbre & transient response is marked.
DR Hibeams, another round core string, are amazingly consistent through the whole range of the bass.
People tell me I might have a bad set of TIs. Maybe, but I'm not sure, right off the bat my local string supplier told me that getting TI replacements is very very hard. So I didn't bother trying to replace strings I might "perceive" as bad-when it just might be the nature of the beast. In contrast to TI, DR will replace any string at the blink of an eye--no questions asked. That has made me a DR guy for life.
Frankly I think my TI set isn't defective per se. I think it is the proverbial nature of the beast. That's because the changes in timbre are commensurate to changes in gauge & tension. The g is at 34 pounds. B is at less than 27!
Anyway, I'll make one more effort evaluate them at my next rehearsal.
Also, these strings are so delicately lean that I would NEVER use them with single coil pups. They seem to work best with a p bass. My Ibanez SR 406 has double coil pups, and I NEVER use the bridge pup, just the neck pup, sort of like a p bass. But still should I really need to give a high eq boost to bring the timbre of those twangy g & c strings in par with the lower string?
Again DR will gladly replace strings that are perceived as deficient but aren't. Their failure rate is pretty low.I stopped using DRs because I found an high number of dead strings and in particular gauge issues, like a 45 G that was 40, but in a 45-105 set, and similar cases...
I'll never ever use DR again
Can you even call TI & speak to a CR person?
Duckwater: I can definitely imagine your scenario...the gauges seem oddly matched, though I've gotten used to them. I've taken to pretty thick sounding PuPs lately, so such problems are minimized. I will most definitely be trying a custom set of DR High Beam singles (close to TI gauges) to compare. Honestly I still love TI, (I prefer the Jazz rounds now), and will buy a set or two and NOT stretch them except for tuning up a whole tone, then releasing back to concert pitch. But at the same time, one can order a set of DR singles from justststrings.com for about 32.00 plus shipping, and I always make sure to load up on guitar strings when I order from them, to justify the shipping cost. If super light DRs feel and sound great, I'd be most pleased. These days, TI rounds at 77.00 plus shipping or tax is a LOT.
Pier: , I the way I got to TI the first time was via email to their distributor (that's who you'll get when you use TI's email contact page). They were prompt, and sent me a replacement plus a prepaid box for the return of the defective. I will definitely report my results this time.
Pier: , I the way I got to TI the first time was via email to their distributor (that's who you'll get when you use TI's email contact page). They were prompt, and sent me a replacement plus a prepaid box for the return of the defective. I will definitely report my results this time.
You might feel that DRs are texturally rough in comparison at first, metallic in feel & sound. Also, I originally purchased Hibeams in gauges (120) 85 65 45 & 35 (25) Way too light. I latee purchased 135, 105 & 30 gauges moving the 85 gauge from the e to the a, etc.
Frankly these gauge Hibeams 135-30 facilitate faster technique than the TIs because of their buoyancy. Not too tense, not too dead. It was wrongheaded of me just to assume that a skinny low tension string such as the TIs) can be played faster--that's why I started with an .085 gauge Hibeam for my e string-to play fast. It proved too light sounding.
I'm not sure about 90 gauge for low e. In another thread I wrote about how my luthier recently performed locally on his 35" scale five string bass using light gauge Hibeams: 130 95 70 (or 75) 55 40. He had parallel wound Nordstrand humbuckers & Benz Genz amplification. The sound he got with his C&W band was shockingly strong & beefy. Obviously, his volume was very loud, and his treble turned down. One thing about those Hibeams is you can eq them, turn the treble way down & they still maintain their clarity & sound integrity.
Also, keep in mind Hibeams seem to be made for slap bass, to snap & growl when thumped & plucked aggressively. But when plucked carefully and properly EQed can sound sufficiently generic. For a generic sound, you do have to pluck those lower notes lightly, otherwise they do produce a "chiff" on attack. If you're not a fan of the funk bass growl, or don't like to hear piano like overtones, then you might not like them-but turning down the treble will fix that anyway. They will still sound natural.
Frankly these gauge Hibeams 135-30 facilitate faster technique than the TIs because of their buoyancy. Not too tense, not too dead. It was wrongheaded of me just to assume that a skinny low tension string such as the TIs) can be played faster--that's why I started with an .085 gauge Hibeam for my e string-to play fast. It proved too light sounding.
I'm not sure about 90 gauge for low e. In another thread I wrote about how my luthier recently performed locally on his 35" scale five string bass using light gauge Hibeams: 130 95 70 (or 75) 55 40. He had parallel wound Nordstrand humbuckers & Benz Genz amplification. The sound he got with his C&W band was shockingly strong & beefy. Obviously, his volume was very loud, and his treble turned down. One thing about those Hibeams is you can eq them, turn the treble way down & they still maintain their clarity & sound integrity.
Also, keep in mind Hibeams seem to be made for slap bass, to snap & growl when thumped & plucked aggressively. But when plucked carefully and properly EQed can sound sufficiently generic. For a generic sound, you do have to pluck those lower notes lightly, otherwise they do produce a "chiff" on attack. If you're not a fan of the funk bass growl, or don't like to hear piano like overtones, then you might not like them-but turning down the treble will fix that anyway. They will still sound natural.
lovethrgrowl:
great asessment of Highbeams. I always felt they were like a more sophisticated Roto swingbass...capable of the savagery of the Roto, but softer when you need it. I feel for a modern, aggressive string, they're quite balanced. JUST FOOD FOR THOUGHT (though you probably already know this well), the lightness and almost silly springiness of the TI Jazz rounds, enforces really precise picking...you know, you gotta' get just on that small edge of the radius, and project your power with focus, otherwise they flail. I've succeeded in lightening my style even more because of this, and I want to go even farther (preserve them flexor tendons). I want to get as light as some guy I saw playing with govt. Mule about five tears ago...he was barely touching his strings up by the neck, great fast fingerwork. He and the drummer had such quiet stage volume and such control, I could hear them talking to eachother from the front row! BTW, as I just whipped out all of my Fretli, each strung with TI rounds, I'm sure I have two damaged G strings (perhaps my fault, too). I will order one set and baby them into breaking in, and A/B with a custom set of DR singles. I do expect, as you said, the DRs will have a more aggressive edge on tap. It might be a good thing. I can see them livening up an ebony board, or adding some grit and sparkle to the massive low end punch of the Dimarzio model J...good God, the low end from those PuPs is a wonder. So freakin' loud, yet still musical.
On my other thread someone offered to buy my set. Now I have second thoughts. I will play my Ibanez (TI) & Squier (DR) & compare the two strings at a distance using a long cable. If I sell the TIs I can put stiff generic hex core GHS Boomers (live like DRs. but not quite as bright & with a harder attack.) I've said it before, but when you have to play rock, pop (Stones, Petty, etc) you might as well get the right "punch in the gut" sound, & that's best accomplished using the type of hex core strings those tunes were originally recorded with. Though the Hibeams can be sufficient for that, just not optimal!
Ironically that stuff I don't like, but to do 30% jazz, I have to do 70% commercial stuff.
One great thing about the TIs. They don't f up the fingers. They can be useful for bouts of "cramming" when you have to prepare & practice long hours for new programs. For that reason alone I still might keep them.
Ironically that stuff I don't like, but to do 30% jazz, I have to do 70% commercial stuff.
One great thing about the TIs. They don't f up the fingers. They can be useful for bouts of "cramming" when you have to prepare & practice long hours for new programs. For that reason alone I still might keep them.
When you pull on the strings I don't think they are stretching so much as they are seating around the bridge and tuners.
