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Strings to tame a Sting Ray ?
- Thread starter Eden Ray
- Start date
There is some truth to this. I can make it sound a bit different, but it still won’t do exactly what a Precision or Jazz style bass will tonally.
However, that is kinda the point. They are the holy trio of standard bass tones to a degree for that reason.
I wonder what their thinking was to string up flats at the factory? Those were the days of roundwounds in rock.
I'm heading in the other direction. Moving away from flats to DR lo-riders SS again. Love those strings on a Ray 
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
I agree. I don't personally think that cutting the volume back on the bass to 'mellow out' the tone is a thing. The tone is the tone, regardless of how much you have the volume control backed off - you're just sending a quieter version of it to the amp, which then has to get boosted again in the gain section. All that changes is how much signal is hitting the input section of the amp. Ideally, you want full volume into the amp from the bass. That, along with setting your amp volume at the highest setting you might need, will give you room to play dynamically (and lighter), thus resulting in a mellower tone if desired.
Thanks, very interesting.
I felt that in a mix, the LaBella's and the EB Cobalts would be almost interchangeable, but I had a slight preference for the LaBella's (and that may be due to them having an almost Round-Wound edge to them - so it kind of makes more sense, if you're going for Flat-Wounds to go with the EB Cobalts, which do the flats thing a little bit more obviously).
Initially I was really underwhelmed by the D'Addario's, but after coming back to them a few times, I began to see how they actually have none of the stuff you don't need in a mix, and their apparent blandness was a strength, rather than a weakness.
The TI's have a completely different, and totally unique character - it's initially quite jarring, and gives the impression of having a lot of room tone (at times it sounded less like a D.I. signal, and more like it was either recorded in a different room to the others, or the Mic had been moved about 18" back from the cabinet).
I can see the T.I. character working quite nicely in a mix, but requiring more work to get it to sit right.
Cheers!
That's true with a StingRay (the volume control is after the buffered output of the preamp), but with a passive instrument, such as a Precision, lowering the volume control on the instruments affects the impedance of the pickup, rolling off higher frequencies.
JazznFunk
Supporting Member
Affirmative. That's what I was definitely aiming at when we're talking about active/buffered basses like a 'Ray, etc.... but I still run all of my passive basses full-on as well, to get the most signal out of them. The tone control is there to roll off the high frequencies. The length of the cable to the amp, DI, etc is also another load on the signal too. That's just how I've always done it.... to maximize what's there in terms of signal, and what could get degraded due to other outside factors.
They were probably the ones I liked most before I settled on the EB Slinky's many years ago.
To my memory, they might have been close to what I am looking for now, but conversely to what you said, when they were new. They become quickly too dull for me.
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Interesting that that was your takeaway. Everyone's ears work differently! To me, I thought the LaBellas were dull and lifeless, Chromes and Cobalt Flats sounded very similar, and TIs were closer to the Chromes & Cobalt Flats than the LaBellas. In the end, I found them all more similar than not, and went with the TIs because they felt the best under my fingers. In a year or so, I might do a recording of the TIs again to see how they've aged.
I recorded all of the tracks direct with my NUX Mighty Plug Pro dry out into Reaper.
D
It's probably not what you want to hear, and I'm sure others will disagree, but I'm speaking from personal experience. I like what I hear when others play Stingrays but their very characteristic tone never worked for my playing style, or the music I typically play. I wasted far too much money on different strings, basically trying to make my Stingray sound less like a Stringray. It never really did. With Stingrays I think it's best to either embrace their signature tone or look for a different bass.
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Nope. Here's the response of one of the tone controls in one of my basses. At "full tone" (green) there is a peak in the upper mids, followed by a rolloff. The blue curve (a bit hard to see, sorry) is the response at "mid tone". The upper mid peak is well damped at that point, but the treble response above it hasn't budged much at all - the tone is halfway down, and you haven't touched the treble part of the response at all. The red curve is at "min tone" - you don't start rolling off the treble until after you've gotten rid of a lot of mids. If you vary the values of the tone capacitor, and the pickup's impedance, things change somewhat in terms of where the rolloffs start, but the order of how things go away as you turn the tone down - the mid peak first, then after thats very damped, the treble starts to go away - that stays the same.
