I think your description of Roto nickels is right on: barky and aggressive, especially when compared to other nickel brands.
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Brightest Nickel Rounds
- Thread starter Lo-E
- Start date
I think your description of Roto nickels is right on: barky and aggressive, especially when compared to other nickel brands.
I always thought the idea behind nickels (vs. stainless steel) was to produce a "thunk" instead of a "boing". Also, nickels are much easier on the fretwork. It seems ALL Rotosounds do have a notoriously "rough" feel under the callouses though.
I'm a bad, bad man. It's been a year and a half since I updated this thread. I dropped the ball... hard... and down a long flight of stairs.
There were reasons for the delay, though; first being that I'm just not gigging as much as I was two years ago. Another being that I'm using other basses a lot, so the bass I'm using for this 'research' is not getting used as much (although it's still getting used, so that's a weak excuse). Lastly, and most importantly, after I had the Ken Smith Burners on the bass for a while, I started waiting for them to die and they just.... didn't. Seriously; I don't know what the heck those strings are made out of - Kryptonite, maybe? - but they broke in after about a week and then just sounded the same for the next year and a half. Never lost intonation, never got too muddy, just stayed put. It was only changing strings on a different bass that made me feel guilty about this thread and decide I'd better get on with it. For those of you still here - if any of you are - I salute your stamina and thank you again for the suggestions that fed the experiment in the first place.
I have a bunch of sets recently purchased, based mostly on your suggestions and I'm getting back on the horse.
First, a quick review of what happened oh, so long ago:
I was looking for a bright nickel roundwound with lots of clarity and detail, medium tension and a smooth feel. The idea was to compensate for a dark-sounding bass.
I tried:
SIT Rock Brights-
Nice, bright tone. Lots of treble bite. Feel was stiffer and rougher than I like. Felt too much like SS to me. Longevity unknown as I didn't care for them and took them off before they died.
D'Addario XL-
Great tone. Brightness was more in the high mids than the treble. Good low mids, too. Smooth feel and nice tension. The winner so far. Decent longevity.
RotoSound Swing Bass Nickel-
These had a nice tone, although a bit scooped in the mids. The feel was smooth, but the tension was too high. Longevity unknown.
Sadowsky Black Label-
These had an excellent tone, but they were not bright. Rather, they were extremely even. Tension and feel were great. I would use these on other basses any time. Good longevity.
Ken Smith Burners-
Really nice treble and low mids. Runner up to the D'Addarios. Great tension and feel. Longevity - seemingly eternal.
This morning, I removed the Everlasting Burners and put on a set of Dean Markley Blue Steel Nickels.
My first impression, right out of the pack is that these have a very strong midrange, but I wouldn't really call them bright. Punchy as heck, but not much more detail than any broken-in set of nickel rounds as far as I can tell. The feel is very smooth and the tension a bit higher than I like, but okay. I tried them first with my B-15, but I got misled by that B-15 in the past, so I tried them also through an Eden 2x10 and a Carvin head to get a better idea of what they'd sound like when I gig or rehearse. It didn't really change my impression.
I'll practice with these this week and I have a jam with some friends scheduled next weekend I can try them out on in a louder setting. I don't have any gigs lined up for about a month, though.
I sincerely apologize for letting this thread languish so long. I swear I won't a year and a half to follow up again!
There were reasons for the delay, though; first being that I'm just not gigging as much as I was two years ago. Another being that I'm using other basses a lot, so the bass I'm using for this 'research' is not getting used as much (although it's still getting used, so that's a weak excuse). Lastly, and most importantly, after I had the Ken Smith Burners on the bass for a while, I started waiting for them to die and they just.... didn't. Seriously; I don't know what the heck those strings are made out of - Kryptonite, maybe? - but they broke in after about a week and then just sounded the same for the next year and a half. Never lost intonation, never got too muddy, just stayed put. It was only changing strings on a different bass that made me feel guilty about this thread and decide I'd better get on with it. For those of you still here - if any of you are - I salute your stamina and thank you again for the suggestions that fed the experiment in the first place.
I have a bunch of sets recently purchased, based mostly on your suggestions and I'm getting back on the horse.
First, a quick review of what happened oh, so long ago:
I was looking for a bright nickel roundwound with lots of clarity and detail, medium tension and a smooth feel. The idea was to compensate for a dark-sounding bass.
I tried:
SIT Rock Brights-
Nice, bright tone. Lots of treble bite. Feel was stiffer and rougher than I like. Felt too much like SS to me. Longevity unknown as I didn't care for them and took them off before they died.
D'Addario XL-
Great tone. Brightness was more in the high mids than the treble. Good low mids, too. Smooth feel and nice tension. The winner so far. Decent longevity.
RotoSound Swing Bass Nickel-
These had a nice tone, although a bit scooped in the mids. The feel was smooth, but the tension was too high. Longevity unknown.
Sadowsky Black Label-
These had an excellent tone, but they were not bright. Rather, they were extremely even. Tension and feel were great. I would use these on other basses any time. Good longevity.
Ken Smith Burners-
Really nice treble and low mids. Runner up to the D'Addarios. Great tension and feel. Longevity - seemingly eternal.
This morning, I removed the Everlasting Burners and put on a set of Dean Markley Blue Steel Nickels.
My first impression, right out of the pack is that these have a very strong midrange, but I wouldn't really call them bright. Punchy as heck, but not much more detail than any broken-in set of nickel rounds as far as I can tell. The feel is very smooth and the tension a bit higher than I like, but okay. I tried them first with my B-15, but I got misled by that B-15 in the past, so I tried them also through an Eden 2x10 and a Carvin head to get a better idea of what they'd sound like when I gig or rehearse. It didn't really change my impression.
I'll practice with these this week and I have a jam with some friends scheduled next weekend I can try them out on in a louder setting. I don't have any gigs lined up for about a month, though.
I sincerely apologize for letting this thread languish so long. I swear I won't a year and a half to follow up again!
Are you redoing your setup for each string? Because the Dean Markley's should be more flexible and feel lower tension, than just about every other set you listed. That's something which keeps me coming back to Dean Markley: lower core to wrap ratio.
I don't go bananas, but I do make sure that the relief is more or less where I like it. The rest of the setup tends to take care of itself. In this particular case, I did do a full setup because I had ignored it for so long. Just to be clear, I don't find the tension to be a deal breaker - not like I did with the SITs, for instance, but I do find it to be a little higher than I like. That's just the out-of-the-pack first impression, though.
In case you weren't around for the beginning of all of this - about 2 1/2 years ago now, I think - I promised that all this testing was going to be pretty darn unscientific, and I'm holding true to my promise! No recordings, no control groups, not even a consistent amp rig or room to test them in. I'm trusting 30 years of playing and a real close familiarity with this particular bass to be my guide. My real-world playing situations are wildly inconsistent, too, so this is a very loose testing environment by design (and some laziness as well
).
I'm a little surprised nobody asked this way back in the beginning, not that it really matters. The bass is an '83 G&L L-2000. Mahogany body and rosewood board. It's a great bass, but it's very dark sounding. It's typical of those pickups - or, at least, of the three L-2000s that I own! When this whole experiment is over, I'll have found the strings I'll be using on the L2Ks from now on, as well as a pair of '79 Ibanez Studio basses which are also weak in the treble department. Great basses, all, just not very bright sounding.
I've been searching for bright nickel strings that last awhile. Unfortunately most strings I have tried don't last as long as I would like, but I do have high hopes for these!
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Man I wish I had read this thread a week ago...I have some d'addarios on their way to me to try but I might prefer the ken smiths based on your description (and if they retain their tone as long as you've described then that sounds like the perfect nickel to me).
Yea you're not the only one...I've been waiting for bass strings online to get them in stock but labella be toying with my emotions. :-(
Yea you're not the only one...I've been waiting for bass strings online to get them in stock but labella be toying with my emotions. :-(
From the description it sounds like they are not bright strings.
I tend to think outside of the box, so here's my take on bright nickels....
...firstly, WHY do you want bright nickels? Is it because you prefer the smooth feel of nickel over the rougher feel of steels? But you want that steel sound out of smooth feeling nickels? If so, the answer to that quandry is......Elixir Steels. They have the super slick feel that Elixir is known for but are very bright...brighter than any nickel string I've tried. They do NOT feel like steels at all. Overall they were way too bright for me, but if you want smooth feeling, super bright strings....try them out.
That's exactly it. In addition to that, what started as a desire to find bright strings for a particular bass turned more into an exercise in curiosity. At this point, I'm just having fun trying out a bunch of strings. I used the same stuff for so many years that it's fun to learn what else is out there.
As far a Elixers go, Toptube suggested these a long while back and they're on my list to try. I haven't tried coated strings in many years and the technology has come a really long way, so I'm interested to see what they're about now. At the time I tried them, they were still a pretty new idea and they hadn't worked out the kinks - like peeling, for instance. I remember not liking the waxy, Teflon feel of them, but that was then and many generations of coatings have been developed since.
Incidentally, mmbongo, thanks for sticking around!
DR makes several different nickel sets. The Sunbeams are great strings, but not bright by any stretch of the imagination. The Lo-Riders are on my list, although I don't expect them to be all that bright, I'm going to try them anyway. The only other nickel strings by DR that I know of are the Jonas Hellborg set which, I believe, are more about midrange than bright highs.
I like DR strings a lot, and use them on some other basses (I'm especially fond of Sunbeams on certain fretless basses). They're very well made strings. We'll see how the Lo-Riders fare, but I don't expect they'll really be what I'm after based upon the descriptions I've read here.
When all this is said and done (sometime around 2017 if I follow my current trajectory!), I might just try a set of DR Hi-Beams on there as well. It's been years since I used SS strings and, given the nature of all these tests, it seems to me that having some sort of reference point wouldn't be a bad idea. I have to be careful though; I don't want to introduce too much science here - might ruin my reputation!
Tried the Elixir steels, did not like them.
Here is the info from labellas website. Read carefully!
TONE. BRIGHTER than typical coated strings AND non-treated strings.
I've been looking for a similar string type. I liked the Sadowsky Black label Nickels. Someone said the blue label SS strings feel very close to Nickel hut have the SS sound. Haven't tried them yet to see. I'm going to try a set of Fat Beam SS on my current bass remembering that I loved them on a previous bass and from memory thought they weren't that rough for SS.
