Please tell me how D'Addario nickel wound strings sound

Yes, you're absolutely right about it being a big mistake.

You should go exchange them for chromes flats before it's too late! HURRY!!

 

D'Addario nickel strings sound great. Just try them. Roll some highs off, if you need to.

 

Here's a thread I made recently with some clips of some strings, including TI flats, Chromes, and D'Addario nickels.

 

Way to go!

 

I'm glad I could help.

 

Just bumping this thread to say I bought a 6-string pack of nickel wounds, and am appalled at the low B. All the other strings have a nice ring to them, but the low B is quiet, muddy, and without definition. I'm going to buy a set of Lo-riders to replace these, and put the four middle nickel wounds on my four string fender j-bass. What a waste. :scowl:

 

That's interesting. D'Addario B strings are, in my experience, possibly the best out there.

Might be a defective string. Email them, and keep the packaging.

 

Having only used DRs for my 6er, I must say this was the worst B I have ever used. The hassle of emailing, returning, etc, is too much. It's still a perfectly fine 4 string set, so I'm not overly vexed.

 

Balanced and bright IME and IMO. Too bright for me, but good strings.

 

I used XL's for a long time and I really liked the bright/funky tone for the top40/pop/country cover band stuff I was playing back then. They didn't last all that long when I was playing 4-5 sets per nite, 5-6 nites per week. About a week was the max life for a set back then. Now that I play mostly weekend warrior gigs and private parties I get several months on a set.
The bottom line, if your used to the flats then the XL's are gonna be a huge change in tone and feel. And, they probably wont last as long as the flats either.
B.

 

i bought these strings thinking they would be less bright than my favorite dr high beams. holy crap these are bright ass strings! i love the tension and feel of them (i got the 105-45) but damn they're bright.

 

I like the D'addario roundwounds....I use the EXL170's on one bass I have.

The difference I find between rounds and flats generally is that flats as a rule produce better D &G string response overall. (4 strings).

 

I agree, they're surprisingly bright for an NPS roundwound fresh out of the pack. Keep playing them, the brightness mellows within about a week.

 

Well, since the OP posted this thread 8 years ago, I imagine those D'Addario nickels have gotten very mellow by now....
However..since we've resurrected this zombie, IME they don't sound much different from EB Hybrid Skinkys when they're both new. I've never kept the D'Add's on anything long enough to find out about their sterling qualities when they break in; all D'addario strings I get, go in the trash as soon as possible. They use something in their final polishing/finishing that makes my hands itch like crazy. Getting them clean enough for me to play involves dangerous chemicals and way too much time. It's much easier to simply replace them with someone else's strings, and just play those. Like, say.. EB Slinkys..