String wear?!

[Eternal Day]

My flats are sooo dead, tension has become low, feels like playing rubber strings.
They are Pyramid Gold's and I love their feel and tone, great strings, but I use
quite a lot of attack most of the time, bend them and stuff. This is kinda how they
look now after just 6 months:

Yes, I'm bored. Have you experienced something like this?
Not sure if "they will sound better and better with time" as they say or if they are on
the verge of just falling apart.

- Cheers

 

[JGbassman]

To me, if that is what is happening, you are getting into the integrity of the string and losing the characteristics of the string. I'd see that as needing replaced.

I play mostly SSRW strings, and once they start getting flat spots, they start losing the shimmer and their touch, especially if I'm doing a lot of slapping.

I can't imagine how any string would sound halfway worn through.

 

[Eternal Day]

I can't imagine how any string would sound halfway worn through.

I wish I had a recording of how they sounded new! Using them almost every day makes it hard to notice
the tonal change but they are very dead indeed.

 

[Badwater]

I've had that happen all the time with acoustic guitar and electric guitar strings. Once I see any fret wear into the strings, I change them. But, it's not to say, they can't be played. I had some Elixr on a acoustic steel string, and wore them out to what you have pictured. Because of their price, I was too cheap to replace them with another set of Elixr. But they played and held their tune just fine, just lacked a lot of the clarity and articulation associated with brand new strings. Eventually, all the coating wore off, and I replaced them with a new set, and ran that one until they grooved out to the point where it didn't sound right.

 

[micguy]

If you wear away enough of the string, one thing you will lose is intonation - not correctable by bridge positions - the overtones of the string will no longer be harmonics.

 

[Killed_by_Death]

I once took some old strings off that looked like that. Here's the part that was strange. It had zero fret-buzz with those old dented strings on it, but when i put new ones on it buzzed like mad, even after setting it up properly.
My conclusion was that the dents were accommodating string movement & clearing the frets.

The local luthier quoted me $100 to re-crown the frets, but said it might not solve the issue. So I sold it soon after, but mostly because it was 9-3/4 lbs.!

Once I put on Cobalt flats & used them for about 9 months w/o issue, but in the three months following they started showing signs of rust at the frets.
They still sounded fine & felt fine, but that rust bugged me so I changed them.

 

[quickfix]

Old thread...but yeah. My five string set of EB cobalt flats looked like the OP image after seven months or so.

Chromes installed. Gee but it's nice to be back home.