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Identifying light blue silked flats on a Beatle bass

Avocett

Avocett

Mar 8, 2020
181
241
#1
Hopefully I can narrow this down because I absolutely loved them. It was for sale at a local store, and has since sold so I can't go back and check more details. It was an Epiphone Beatle bass and it had the shiniest smoothest flats on it, you could barely even see or feel the wrapping on the E string, it looked like a solid shiny wire. They seemed well used as the shiny-ness of the strings varied a bit. They were way smoother and shinier than my D'addario chromes, and the silk wrapping was light baby blue, like fender sonic blue but a little mellower. I'm hoping that it's a Beatle bass narrows it down a bit as I hear those take special strings and only a few companies make them.

Guys in the store thought they were Labella's, but in browsing string silk color posts here, Labella's have blue, but I haven't seen any light blue.

Fingers crossed, they felt amazing.
 
#4
Avocett said:
Would you say that those flats are essentially identical to their other flats in feel and appearance? They were so shiny and smooth.
Click to expand...

La Bella flats for the Beatle set are basically the same as the other Deep Talking' Flats, except for the winding length (34" ball to silk), and the silked ends being thinner than their standard flats to fit properly on the skinny guitar-style tuner posts on the Hofner Beatle Bass.
 
#5
The flats on some Chinese Hofner Beatle Basses have silks like that. The chances of finding those on an Epiphone, though, are probably somewhere between Slim and None. And, I heard that Slim left town.... I'd say @michael_t is right. My $$'s on the La Bella Beatle Bass Flats...:cool:
 
#6
GIBrat51 said:
The flats on some Chinese Hofner Beatle Basses have silks like that. The chances of finding those on an Epiphone, though, are probably somewhere between Slim and None. And, I heard that Slim left town.... I'd say @michael_t is right. My $$'s on the La Bella Beatle Bass Flats...:cool:
Click to expand...

Now that you mentioned the Chinese Beatle Bass flats, that's actually a possibility. The simple fact of the matter is I have never seen La Bella flats with light blue silk; I was just going by what @rockinrayduke said above.
 
#10
michael_t said:
Now that you mentioned the Chinese Beatle Bass flats, that's actually a possibility. The simple fact of the matter is I have never seen La Bella flats with light blue silk; I was just going by what @rockinrayduke said above.
Click to expand...
I just watched a demo of the La Bella's on their website. Light blue silks at the tuner end were clearly visible on that very old Hofner violin bass. I didn't see any on the ball ends, though. Might just have been that bass's tailpiece, or the strings don't have any, but... no silk visible.:cool:
 
#12
Well, I seemed to remember that they did, but... I just looked at the 760FX's on my Dano Longhorn - and those don't. The 760FL's I took off my Epi EA-260 did have silk on the tuner and ball ends; but, those were older than Methuselah - and the silks were black, too. Anyway; the Beatle Bass Flats have light blue silk on the tuner ends; regardless of what my feeble memory thinks it remembers...:whistle:
 
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