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Giving Pro Steels a try...
- Thread starter BrentSimons
- Start date
its worth noting that he mentions he is using overwound pickups so he probably has a tonne of mids on his p bass (which is already a mid heavy instrument)
And at 4 months, I've changed to a fresh set. The strings were still not dead, but had changed character sufficiently that they were no longer what I wanted them to be.
Normally when I put a fresh set of strings on a bass, the most noticeable thing is the return of the richness of tone. With these Pro Steels, the most striking thing is the crispness of the articulation. There had been no huge shifts in the basic shape of the tone, it was more the attack that had mellowed.
I think that is probably due to their inherent mid scoop, a lot of strings as they break in they lose a little of the gnarlier mid frequencies but pro steels have always been about treble clarity more than anything
I see your point (especially with the Boomers E string) but my memory of XL Nickles is that their life span was the equivalent of one long turn of the tone knob down from 11 to 0. Perhaps that was just their breaking in period....
I still recoil from the word "scooped" to describe the Pro Steels. To me "scooped" is a deliberate act of removing the core of the sound. To be sure, if your two pickups are busily cancelling out their mids, Pro Steels won't be the way to get the stuffing back in the sound, but if a pickup knows what to do with them, Pro Steels will give it enough mids to work with. Going from Fender 7250s to them on the P didn't take anything away from the sound, it just expanded the sonic spectrum, giving it vibrancy and depth.
I see your point (especially with the Boomers E string) but my memory of XL Nickles is that their life span was the equivalent of one long turn of the tone knob down from 11 to 0. Perhaps that was just their breaking in period....
I still recoil from the word "scooped" to describe the Pro Steels. To me "scooped" is a deliberate act of removing the core of the sound. To be sure, if your two pickups are busily cancelling out their mids, Pro Steels won't be the way to get the stuffing back in the sound, but if a pickup knows what to do with them, Pro Steels will give it enough mids to work with. Going from Fender 7250s to them on the P didn't take anything away from the sound, it just expanded the sonic spectrum, giving it vibrancy and depth.
Scooped isnt necessarily a bad thing, all these little things are all part of a bigger whole and it is all part of dialling in the tone, if you want a bright tone then Prosteels will give you that and then some, also if you are using a bass that is a bit muddy in the midrange then Prosteels will clean that tone up for you, on the other hand if you favour a midrange heavy tone then they are probably not going to be favourite for you
I use XLs and they are one of the brightest nickel rounds out the pack... They normally last six weeks for me before I notice a dramatic shift in tone.
The Nickel XLs are a decent middle of the road string but I found the consistency to be so so, of the half a dozen times I have used them I have had 2 sets were the E string was dead within 2 weeks, Prosteels seem to be more consistent
I've used XLs for 20 years and have never had a dead string.
An occasional dead string seems to be the norm with about all of the string brands I’ve used, mostly D’addario, Ernie Ball, and GHS, all nickels.
I’ve been using Pro Steels for 3-4 months now and I just recently came across a B string (.135) that just didn’t sound right. Not dead, just not right. Since I buy .135 extra-long singles for B strings, I changed it after a couple of days and the replacement sounded as it should. So it still happens, I guess.
Not so much dead out of the packet just I have had the E string go dead on me within a couple of weeks on a couple of sets of nickel XLs, I change my strings quite often as I like a bright tone and have only used the nickel XLs maybe half a dozen times so 2 dead E strings is way too much so I'm done with the nickels.
Prosteels on the other hand have been very consistent, I prefer Rotosounds but I would have no issue using Prosteels if they weren't available.
No problems with XLs for me. Last six weeks before they start to lose their brightness.
Just wanted to give this a bump and give my thoughts on the pro steels that I tried on my fretless. 45-130 regular light gauge. Bass is a custom fretless with ebony fingerboard and Spector soapbars. So as has been mentioned these strings are definitely scooped. More than rotos and other steels I've tried. Maybe more than hi beams too. The feeling is definitely on the stiffer side to me. I feel like these strings have a strong fundamental and I can see why some slap players would dig these. Really classic slap sound. I was hoping that they would be more musical for me but they didn't quite have that. The mid scoop really took away from the twang and muaahh tones and for some that's good but for me I was really used to lots of it from the blue steels I was playing. I would totally recommend those for fretless btw. But anyway not bad strings but not what I need them to be. I'll let them stay on the bass for a bit and just see what happens but for my initial test I'm not blown away by this combination. The last good thing I will say is that the b string is honestly the best part of everything. Due to the solid fundamental it sounds pretty big and that is always a good thing when dealing with low b strings.
far right is the bass I used...
far right is the bass I used...
So continued from my last post I decided to swap strings with my Warwick. So as has been the case always this bass is picky about what strings work on it. The first impression on this bass is actually better than I was expecting. The overall tone of the strings works much better with it than the fretless they were on. It gave me a focused tone which I like and the lows really compliment the bass which already has lots of low end naturally. Not very much mids but deep lows and treble attack is all there. It sounded good when you dig in especially. To get the tone I like it might take some real reconfiguration of my eq and compression but the natural eq of the string seems to fit in with the bass fairly well. Still stiffer feeling and mid scooped but it works better on this bass which is why we hear about one guys experience being great and the next guy's being how much something sounds like a greased turd.
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On second though, while some rigs can exaggerate ugly treble ranges, making bright strings like Pro Steel a no-go, it's less of a problem if you use one pickup at a time and single coils IME. I can see ProSteels shine in something like a non-split P-bass.
Spector Rex 4, EMG TW+DC & BTS, D‘addario ProSteels by firebrain (soundcloud.com)
The former bassist of my band used something similar and I was always impressed with his tone. Not gonna lie, to me, when paired with the right bass Pro Steels sound superior.
The former bassist of my band used something similar and I was always impressed with his tone. Not gonna lie, to me, when paired with the right bass Pro Steels sound superior.
