John Paul Jones on flatwounds

[Jibudo]

There has been a lot of discussion on John Paul Jones using flatwounds on the first recordings of led zeppelin.

I Spoke personally with him and the answer was a plain "no" he stopped using them before the zeppelin years and in fact he told me too that he hates flats.

We've met at kyma international sound symposium, a great software for sound manipulation.

 

[PhR]

From Guitar Player interview 1977:

gp: what kind of a pick and strings do you use?

jpj: herco gray and rotosound wire-wounds. i got into them with the
alembic because i never used to like the round-wound strings. on the
fender i used rotosound, but they were flat-wound, and i've never
liked the string noise. but the alembic just demands you use something
a bit brighter; otherwise you're doing the instrument a disservice. i
first put round-wound strings on the telecaster bass because it
demanded that. i tried flat-wounds on the alembic, and sort of lost
half the instrument. plus the wire-wounds seem to fill out better if
jimmy's soloing; they make more of a guitar sound on the alembic than
a bass sound. but the alembic's got enough low end that it fills out
the spectrum. i think it's going to be alright.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/alt.music.led-zeppelin/o-VKOxuuo5Q

No disrespect to John Paul but I'd rather trust to an interview he gave in the seventies when he had just switched to an Alembic and started to use roundwounds.

 

[bachlover]

What a great segment ^^. Very well put about doing the instrument a "disservice" by using flats. I find they take a lot of character (personality) out of an instrument. Not to say they don't sound great in some apps, though.

 

[JTE]

Thanks for quoting that GP article- I recall reading it when it first came out (wow, 37 years ago...). And I agree, his 1977 recollection of what strings he was using at the time is bound to be more accurate than his estimation of it almost forty years later.

 

[OldDirtyBassist]

That's not an Alembic. It's a Becvar. John Paul Jones...one of the greatest ever, knows little about equipment.

 

[tbz]

He owned several Alembics. His triple omega was a Becvar.

 

[bluesblaster]

thats a very impressive imitation of flatwound strings on there first record,