just thought i'd leave this here for your enjoyment:
i thought the idea would get more visibility in "basses," but maybe it belongs in "strings" or some other subforum.
i've always used roundwounds, but i've always only played fretless. i see/hear/read so many fretless newbies avoiding the strings that get 'that sound'*. i try to advise otherwise (re: flat wounds), but maybe it takes someone like steve to weigh in.
*edit: e.g., the sound steve bailey gets in the video.
Well...
Yeah, I've watched that video a couple of times. Yes, he does make some good points; and, of course he's entitled to his point of view. I say that, instead of opinion, since he has empirical proof of that point of view. In my world, people with opinions, are often just talking out their ventral orifice... However;
Sorry, but round wound stings are
verboten on my fretless basses. Or on any of my 30 basses, for that matter. 4 of those basses wear tape wounds; the rest wear all kind of flats. Even my 5 guitars wear flats. Why?
Well, it's mainly because my hands suffer from nerve damage, caused by prolonged vibration (40 years of riding old motorcycles, and lots of hours with a jackhammer). Couple that with a bunch of frostbite over the years, and you get fingers that cannot tolerate playing round wound bass strings for more than a minute or two. It feels like running my fingers across a really aggressive wood rasp...
I used to have rounds on a lot of my basses, but... a couple of years ago, it reached the point that I either had to replace everything with flats or tapes - or just quit playing...
So, I - reluctantly - got rid of all my rounds. Last year, when I got my G&L Custom Shop ('cause it's a lefty) Kiloton Lined Fretless Bass, it came with Hybrid Slinkys (at least, they felt like them - and I used to use them a lot). They lasted about 5 minutes past the initial function check. Yes, they did sound good - really good; and, yes, they "mwahed" like nobody's business. But... 5 minutes of them was all my fingers could stand. The La Bella LTF4-A Low Tension Flats I replaced the Slinkys with? They sound really good, too. They don't "mwah"
quite as well as the Slinkys, but most of what I play doesn't really
need "mwah", anyway. But, my poor fingers appreciate the Hell out of the way they feel...
So... I'm not going to tell you that flats - or tapes (which one of my fretless basses wears) are what
you should be using. I try pretty hard not to tell people what to do. I don't have rounds on my fretless basses simply because my hand problems won't let me play rounds any more. But, honestly? After using the different flats on 3 of them, and the tapes on the other one? I'm not sure I'd use rounds - even if I could...
