fantastic thread. i've been looking for this for a while. i play a 69 fender jazz for reference. here's my thoughts
Pyramid
Labella
Chromes
TI
Rotosound
I've been on a flats journey for a long time. Had the pyramids on there for the recent time. Great fundamental and low E, but not much attack and clarity. the D and G strings are too bright, the /A set is 45 65 85 105 and more balanced i'd bet but even tighter tension and less bright so super thud and thump city. the ultimate r&b flat IMO.
Labella FL i've had on and off for a while. they sound amazing when playing by yourself, but in the mix i just find they get lost. the mid scoop doesn't help a mid scooped fender jazz and it's all bottom end and even the highs get swallowed up. hard to hear myself at gigs with these.
Chromes - been a long time since i've had these on. i remember they were super bright for months and months. like i did a year of touring and they finally mellowed. when they had mellowed they had this burpy mids thing going on that i really liked on the jazz. the highs died a lot and there was adequate bottom. took forever though, like 3-4 hours a day for a year. afraid to try them again because the tension is so high (i got over tendonitis and play with a very light touch now) and frankly because i'm too impatient to play them for a year to get "the sound" to see if it's right.
TI - I have bought and sold so many sets of these. on one hand, fantastic unique tone very mid heavy, very woody sounding on a fender jazz. definitely lacks bottom end, i always had to raise my neck pickup E string side to get more low end output. low tension isn't a deal breaker, but you have to crank the truss up to counter balance and i always end up with either medium action and great tone, or perfect action and it's a little too bright and grindy since the action is so low with the tension. On top of all this, that A string just sucks. 100 E could be bigger to make up for the low end lack of output but it's not terrible, D and G are fine sounding, but the A string is so weak. you have to raise it so high because its so thin you end up getting low output. Some have said buy the Super Long Scale A and use that with the Long Scale set, it's thicker and helps with this. I haven't done that yet, maybe I will.
Ernie Ball, Fender, GHS precision, Rotosound - Nothing to write home about, bought them, used them for a while, didn't dig and forgot what they sounded like. not distinct enough for me. Didn't "jump" out at me.
I haven't tried sadowsky or DR. I"ve heard the DR are pretty thumpy and don't add much variation to the flats catalog. The sadowsky kinda intrigue me. I've heard they are like a thicker meatier thumpier TI sound. Very mid heavy but with bottom end. Well balanced. I might give those a shot and the TI hybrid set.
