Dean Markley Fretmasters

I had kind of wondered about these strings for a while, and I went in a local music store, and lo and behold, they were selling them for 10 bucks. Apparently got a lot of them cheap somewhere. They were light gauge, .044 - .098, and I was thinking about trying something lighter than my usual .050 - .105's, so I grabbed a set. The idea is that they're kind of like a compression-wound over the frets, and roundwound over the pickups. On a 24-fret bass, the compression winding stops at about the 21st fret, so they pretty much match the description.

So far I like them. Big, deep sound with good brightness. Compression wounds have always felt pretty similar to roundwounds to me, and these have some of the rough stainless feel. They are less prone to string squeak, though, which is an advantage for a guy like me. I think I'm going to go get a few more sets at this price.

I just put them on today, so I don't know about string life. I think they sound pretty similar to Lo-Riders, which is a good thing, IMO. If they're easy on the frets, so much the better.