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Double Bass Metal String Life??? Blast Cult Low Lifes

Slapstyle

Slapstyle

Dec 3, 2009
336
196
Maine
#1
What do people expect to get out of a metal string as far as life span? I got some Blast Cult Low Lifes which I like for the action, and the tone is fairly good. Certainly not bad for use with a mag pickup (obviously some sacrifices are already being made in tone there). Anyway, they're coming unwound after less than a year which greatly disappointed me.

Yes I'm playing a lot of slap stuff, but I only gig like twice a month and I take care of my gear. I'm not particularly rough or aggressive.

The separation in the winding is down between the end of the fingerboard and the bridge, not where I would expect it (at the bridge or nut).

What say ye????
 
#2
Depends on the strings. My experience:

Spriocores and cockroaches...eternity
Pirastro Permanents - 6-12 months (Ironically)
Pirastro Flat Chrome Steels - a little longer maybe.
Pirastro Jazzers - 1-2 years depending on how you like um. They don't break, they just sound better newer.

Probably different for every brand and make.
 
#5
I recently ran through a whole bunch of string sets and Low Life's were one of the more recent ones I tried. A friend of mine loaned them to me for a while. I really liked the tone a lot. The tension was just too low for me. I was getting lots of buzz and I would've needed to change my setup pretty drastically if I had wanted to keep them. I did get the impression that they wouldn't last long though. Granted, I tend to beat the heck out of my strings. After a few weeks of use there was a bit of winding separation at the bridge. But, this could certainly be attributed to the fact that I had to raise my action super high to accommodate the low tension and get rid of buzz. I'd love it if they made these in a medium tension.
 
#6
Damn man, 6 months is a good expectancy? I put my helicore hybrids back on, but I have almost no fingerboard click on the D and G. The tension doesn't bother me too bad, but it doesn't make for good clicking on the higher pitched strings. I use a mag pickup because feedback was killing me and I need higher volume in tight little venues (usually restaurants where music was an afterthought) where my amp is often immediately behind me, pointing directly at the back of my bass. I'm considering trying a piezo again, so i can try some of the other synthetic strings (i used to use Velvet Animas and like them but not for rockabilly), but I'd really like to find a durable set of steels that have good clack.
 
#7
I don't think 6 months is reasonable, but that was my consistent experience with those particular strings. To be clear, they didn't break, unravel or otherwise fail after 6 months, but for me, they lost their goodness. I started tweaking my eq, considering a soundpost adjustment, etc then swapped a string and realized all was right in the world. Maybe for someone else or someone playing a different type of music, they would have stayed happy with them, but they undeniably changed soncially and for me, lost what I found useful about them.

Spirocores are the opposite, most people feel they get better with age. Jazzers are similar, but still like to refresh them in the first 1/2 of year 2.
 

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