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lighter gauge strings deliver more fundamental

#41
Johnny StingRay said:
Owwwwww! My brain is exploding! I slap Chromes on my EBMM StingRay 5 and just play! All of this technical stuff is sometimes too much to comprehend!!! Pretty soon someone will try to analyze the individual atoms in each and every manufactured string paired with each and every bass ever built to compare the most minuscule sound differences for each and every note played!!! Ahhhhhhhhh! It hurts!
As I used to tell my praise group's band leader......."Shut up and play!"
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100% agree. if you're making something sound good then it sounds good. i find 45-105 sound and feel best on my bass. theres an aspect of HOW you play that will affect this more than anything. I play a little hard so medium strings don't bottom out. Someone else could be different.

Element Zero said:
Whatever floats your boat. I personally prefer thicker gauge strings because of the feel. I've never know in the real world a single bass player who cares so much about the fundamental. But here on this site? Too many... in my opinion.
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There are so many things on this site that don't actually matter to people in the real world. All the best players I know in the world don't care. they play the bass that sounds good, the strings they like, don't mess around with things all the time and thats how they practice the best and get the best gigs.
 
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#45
lighter gauge strings deliver more fundamental.

Ok, no argument from me on this, but my questions are; does tone with more fundamental content sound "better" than tone with more harmonic content? Is there a pursuit of tone with the most fundamental content? If it were possible to generate a pure fundamental tone and no overtones from a bass, wouldn't it sound like a single oscillator synthesizer?

I'm trying to figure out if I should run toward lighter strings and more fundamental content, or run toward heavy strings rich with harmonic content. Harmonics enable us to tell the difference between a note played on a bass guitar from the same note played on a oboe. If taken to the extreme "more fundamental" might be equivalent to "more sterile"
 
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#47
jellymax said:
some may think that upping your string size will make
your sound more fat and bassy. well, it may be more
magnetic action for the pickup, but the tension will be higher
meaning more overtones, less fundamental.
how do i know this?
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You basically have continuum. At one end of the continuum the string is very flexible and vibrates freely. At the other end of the continuum the string become stiffer and start behaving more like solid piece of metal than a string. Ref: https://www.phys.uconn.edu/~gibson/Notes/Section4_2/Sec4_2.htm

My understanding is that a lower gauge string will need less tension and also be more flexible, so it will vibrate more like a pure string. Heavier gauge strings will be stiffer and have more tension. The article linked above talks about how stiffness causes the harmonics to go sharp (inharmonicity), but it does not address how it affects the balance of harmonics.

But pretty sure this thread does and I believe it supports your position. See post #1
The fatter the string, the fatter the tone?

For proper context, let's keep in mind that the fundamental is the 1st harmonic, and anyone who has read this thread knows most bass guitars do not produce a strong fundamental: Bass frequency/waterfall plots: what they mean to rigs
 
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#51
It is not low gauge as much as low tension that impacts the fundamental. This is why people go nuts over short scale basses. On a short scale, all things equal, string tension will be lower. This changes the fundamental hence people prefer short scale basses for their low ends.

I prefer low tension to tension strings with relatively low gauge. DR Sunbeams and High Beams are good for me. I prefer 40-120 for my 5s and 40-100 for my 4's. I have also on occasion put Thomastik balanced tension sets on my 4s where I think the E is lie a .089 and those SLAY. Not because of the lower gauge but the lower tension.

So I would agree with the OP.
 
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