Mild disappointment re: LaBella Ltd. Ed. tapewounds

[bassbuddy]

I received today with some excitement the new "Lemon Lime" Ltd. Ed. tapewounds from the LaBella Roadie Club. Popped them on my fretless Jazz, and they sure play and sound great. But what's that buzzing? Alas, with no metal touching my fingers, the bass is not properly grounded! I may have to move them over to something else, maybe my fretted J with the EMG's. I sure wanted them on the fretless!

 

[trothwell]

Yeah, that happens. EMG active pickups are a good solution. Some passive basses have this problem worse than others; I have a passive Fender with tapewounds that has almost no buzzing noise, but tapewounds on another Fender buzzes a lot.

 

[iiipopes]

ALL tapewound strings do this, ALL. The solution is either to use EMG's or to have a chrome or nickel cover on a pickup, like a Gibson humbucker or a Rickenbacker neck pickup, grounded to the bridge ground, so you can anchor your thumb on the cover and kill the noise. Shielding helps, and others will chime in that swear that is the solution, but it only gets a player part way back to no noise when using nylon tapewound strings.

 

[bassbuddy]

That all makes sense. I wish I'd thought of that before I ordered them. Oh well, they're pretty interesting; I'll salt them away and pull them out again when the right situation arises.

 

[woodyng2]

Interesting. I have labella white or copper white tapewounds on 3 of my basses and have not experienced that happening.
2 are Rickenbacker 4004 models with humbucker pickups, and the other 1 is a piezo-only Tune bass.

 

[Yahboy]

Suggest Edit the topic title......

 

[AboutSweetSue]

Sweet. I was really wanting to belong to a club. Well, now I do. So excited.

 

[jd56hawk]

I have tapewounds on seven basses, including two Dean Exotica acoustic basses...GHS and D'Addario black tapewounds.
Why don't I experience this problem?

 

[woodyng2]

I received today with some excitement the new "Lemon Lime" Ltd. Ed. tapewounds from the LaBella Roadie Club.

I’m not a member of this club, but i love Labella tapewounds of all persuasions.
Of the 4 varieties offered on their website, I’ve used all but the Gold White ones,which have some sort of brass underlayment. The copper white ones are my favorite,but i really also love the “plain” white ones.
Just curious, do you have the official description/specs of the lemon lime edition?

 

[AboutSweetSue]

Joining the La Bella Roadie Club is free. Their string selection is painfully limited. All they have right now are super polished Hofner Beatle Bass strings.

If any new strings pop up, would y’all please post in here so that we can jump on them?

 

[woodyng2]

Joining the La Bella Roadie Club is free. Their string selection is painfully limited. All they have right now are super polished Hofner Beatle Bass strings.

If any new strings pop up, would y’all please post in here so that we can jump on them?

Did a search on the labella website for Roadie Club and Club….no results found.
Edit….apparently the labella roadie club has its own website.
2nd edit….now that I’ve become a member, I see the lemon lime strings are sold out…..

 

[AboutSweetSue]

Did a search on the labella website for Roadie Club and Club….no results found.
Edit….apparently the labella roadie club has its own website.

Yeah, best I can figure is that La Bella wanted an outlet to sell their custom designs. Which is absolutely awesome. You don’t see many string manufacturers doing small batches.

 

[woodyng2]

Over the last 7 years I’ve really come to love a lot of Labellas strings.
The fact that they started offering their various tapewound sets in a lighter gauge is perfect for my needs.
And their low tension flexible flatwounds are great, especially now that they beefed up the A string.
Glad I saw this post, i had no idea this Roadie club even existed before today. Thanks!

 

[sirhc1956]

The solution is either to use EMG's or to have a chrome or nickel cover on a pickup, like a Gibson humbucker or a Rickenbacker neck pickup, grounded to the bridge ground, so you can anchor your thumb on the cover and kill the noise.

I have this problem with tapewounds too, mainly if I touch a pickup pole while anchoring my picking hand. A geeky solution I've used is clipping a jumper cable from my wedding ring to a tuning peg. Looks silly but it works.

 

[GIBrat51]

ALL tapewound strings do this, ALL. The solution is either to use EMG's or to have a chrome or nickel cover on a pickup, like a Gibson humbucker or a Rickenbacker neck pickup, grounded to the bridge ground, so you can anchor your thumb on the cover and kill the noise. Shielding helps, and others will chime in that swear that is the solution, but it only gets a player part way back to no noise when using nylon tapewound strings.

You know, I really hate to disagree with you, but... No, ALL tapewound strings do NOT do this. My early '90s MIK Rogue VB-100 violin bass has worn Roto Bass 88 tapes for... at least a decade now. It's never given me even a hint of any of the troubles other people seem to suffer from, when using tapes. Why? I have no idea; I just play it, and don't worry about it. I also have an '06 Carvin LB-20 that wore tapes for... well, at least 6 years. When I decided to string it BEAD, I put the heavy strings from a set of La Bella 760N-B Black Tapes on it. They came off 2 years ago, but not because of any noise problem; the 135 B string was just a hair too rubbery feeling for me. Again, I have no idea why I had no noise issues. The Option 50 switch that splits both the HB50 pickups, maybe? Who can say? All I know, is that if I'd been smart enough to use the 60-115 strings from that set, they'd probably still be on that bass. Those La Bellas really sounded good on that Carvin... Please understand; I'm not pooh-poohing other people's difficulties. I understand the reasoning behind the problem; what I don't understand, is why I don't have the problem, too. Maybe if I put a set of tapes on a different bass I will have a problem, but... on my two basses that had/have tapes? No problem...

 

[iiipopes]

You know, I really hate to disagree with you, but... No, ALL tapewound strings do NOT do this. My early '90s MIK Rogue VB-100 violin bass has worn Roto Bass 88 tapes for... at least a decade now. It's never given me even a hint of any of the troubles other people seem to suffer from, when using tapes. Why? I have no idea; I just play it, and don't worry about it. I also have an '06 Carvin LB-20 that wore tapes for... well, at least 6 years. When I decided to string it BEAD, I put the heavy strings from a set of La Bella 760N-B Black Tapes on it. They came off 2 years ago, but not because of any noise problem; the 135 B string was just a hair too rubbery feeling for me. Again, I have no idea why I had no noise issues. The Option 50 switch that splits both the HB50 pickups, maybe? Who can say? All I know, is that if I'd been smart enough to use the 60-115 strings from that set, they'd probably still be on that bass. Those La Bellas really sounded good on that Carvin... Please understand; I'm not pooh-poohing other people's difficulties. I understand the reasoning behind the problem; what I don't understand, is why I don't have the problem, too. Maybe if I put a set of tapes on a different bass I will have a problem, but... on my two basses that had/have tapes? No problem...

I'm glad you have a good experience. I will agree that when Sir Macca put Roto 88's on his Hofner, you can't hear any noise on the Abbey Road album from his tracks. But I still maintain my post: where there is no direct ground, the strings are the perfect antenna, and you will get noise or hum somewhere eventually without grounding them in some manner. Remember that your Rogue VB-100, being a copy of the Hofner, has staple pickups which have the metal pickup covers, which are grounded, and the ball ends are in contact with the tailpiece which is grounded, so you may be grounded anyway, siphoning off the noise as I described. Rock on!