Yep that sounds just like them to my ear, nice round tone and great midrange coming through! Great stuff man!
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Thomastik Jazz Rounds - amazing
- Thread starter Mike Vee
- Start date
I just purchased here, thanks for the heads up! I'll be putting these on a 34" scale Spector NS2-JJ, succeeding the Ken Smith Compressors. Let there be bass!
I put the Sheehan set on my StingRay Special. That E is not messing around! I'll have to break them in a bit but so far I like them better than slinkys that it came with. I also tried Galli & TI Power Rounds and neither worked well on this bass, so fingers crossed!
Tonight I got curious about trying TI flats on this jazz bass. I had a used set laying around. Oh man, the rounds are amazing, I stand by that, but these flats are definitely never coming off. Absolutely insane tone. Ridiculous growl and authority. Deep, thick bass with incredibly rich and gritty mid growl. It’s a new tone I’ve never had in my toolbox. Never had a jazz bass before and with TIs it’s just so impressive. I’m as awestruck as when I first got my ‘06 Stingray setup with TIs.
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I've really considered switching my Jazz bass to flats. When these rounds on there die I'm going to swap them. I have two p basses for this reason so one can have flats and the other rounds. I haven't loved the jazz bass enough to justify two but it's worth a try to see if they work on it I think even if I quite like it with TI rounds.
Didn't read through the thread so sorry if this has been covered but if you like TI Jazz rounds Dogal Jonas Hellborg strings have a similar feel and the same kind of amazing tonal clarity. The thing you might not like is there's more string noise. The TI's have a smooth beautiful polished feel that the Dogals don't. I'm a long time user of both TI Jazz flats and rounds and definitely still prefer them on a couple of basses. But since there's not much out there that's very similar to TI rounds (GHS balanced nickels?...sort of but not really) I felt it was worth mentioning the Dogal Hellborgs. In my limited experience with the Dogals they seem to last longer than the TI's too which has always been kind of an issue with me.
Jazzdogg
Less barking, more wagging!
I currently have all of my electric basses strung with TIJF, and I couldn't be happier. I am curious about TI Rounds and Dogal Hellborgs.
I'll order set of each and try them on two different basses five-strings; one fretted, one unfretted. I primarily play jazz, blues, horn bands (e.g., Tower of Power), and Latin jazz..
Which strings would you recommend for fretted and fretless five-string basses?
Jeez don't think I'm up for recommending. I haven't used a 5 string much for one thing and have little experience with B strings. My default go-to is often TI Flats but I can't stand that .136 B. Only in the last few years getting more into the ABG have I been serious about even trying many different rounds. That's how I came to TI Jazz rounds but have no experience with roundwound B strings other than probably D'Addarios or something 20 years ago.
Now you bring it up though it looks like the Hellborg B is only a .120 and the TI round is a .118 which I'm curios about. I have an old P bass I rarely use that I've been considering tuning BEAD. Maybe this is my excuse to go for it and try Dogal and TI Jazz round B strings (and maybe GHS Balanced Nickels...I do kinda like those). I think you just passively enabled me to spend some money on strings lol. Couldn't give any tangible reasons why but my gut says I'll like the Hellborgs for a low B set. Won't know til I try all of them though.
Sorry I couldn't be more helpful. Maybe in a few weeks after I convert that P bass and play it some.
I tried LaBella LTF on my Jazz and it was very unremarkable. (I LOVE LaBella LTF on a P-bass.)
Next I tried the TI Rounds, was amazing, but not old-school enough for me. Wasn;t my sound at all, but it was fun for a few days.
Next I tried TI Flats - AMAZING!!!!! Honestly I was about to sell this Jazz, this made it a keeper for life. The tone is simply exquisite. Much different from LaBella or rounds. Just pure and utter perfection.
I also have TIs on my Stingray, but this Jazz sounds much, much different.
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I had TI JFs on my former AV '62 Jazz Bass. Great tone and feel.
So I had the same glorious epiphany as many of you the first time I put TIJF on a P bass, then a Jazz - both 4 strings. I thought "these will be AMAZING on a 5 string!" So I sold a kidney and bought a 5 string set for the LEJ5 in my profile picture.
I really tried to love them and left them on there for about a year. Man, those E-A strings were a delight just like I expected! But BlueRock is exactly right... that B string is just a sloppy and disappointing noodle soup of sadness. I finally admitted to myself that I basically just had just adjusted to playing that awesome 5 string as a regular ol' 4 because of how bad that B string was. Then I went back to rounds and am happy again.
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I haven't tried the 5-6 string varieties and like I said above, I put the rounds on my StingRay Special, I wanted to love it but they didn't work on that bass the way I wanted them to. I stand by my assessment that TIs suit more basses than they don't but they don't work on all of them. Because of their midrange presence I found them probably not ideal for hot pickups.
I've decided to definitely try some TI flats on my Jazz bass. I have some Dogal nickel rounds to try but not the Hellborgs which I'm very curious about.
I've decided to definitely try some TI flats on my Jazz bass. I have some Dogal nickel rounds to try but not the Hellborgs which I'm very curious about.
Have you tried TI flats on a Stingray? Barely dip the mids, boost the bass and treble slightly, omg, it's one of my favorite tones. And you can go more extreme on the previous settings for increased effect, obviously lol. It also gets better as they age. It seems to be pretty key to dip the mids a little, in my opinion. Otherwise it's just too focused and pointy on the Ray.
Let me know what you think of TI Flats on the Jazz. For me it's been an epiphany of bass playing. Everything wide open, maybe a bit of tone roll-off. Amazing!!!
Weird ... my experience has been exactly the opposite. The TIJF .136 is the only flatwound low B I've tried that I thought was worth a damn. For me, La Bella and D'Addario have sucked by comparison.
I'll admit, though, that the first time I tried TIJFs, I had the same reaction you did. But I discovered that what I actually had was a defective string. The distributor replaced it, and things were much better. Could it be a bad string?
I should also say that I've used TIJFs only on ABGs--so far, anyway. That might, or might not make a difference.
Hm. Interesting. Well... I cannot say it WASN'T a defective string, but it definitely did not strike me as defective - just dumpy. It went on fine, tuned to pitch correctly, never had any obvious drop in pitch as if the core had been compromised in any way. Looked fine throughout the life of the string while it was installed on the bass.
Can you tell me more about how the string you had was defective? Were there any visual signs, or other, beside crummy tone that made you believe it was borked?
When I finally stopped trying to "make it work" on my LEJ I took the string set off and put the strings on a fretless project P bass I was working on. I threw the B away because I never wanted to use it again, and couldn't imagine anyone else ever being happy with it either. It kills me, because that one stinkin' string was basically $100. I think I paid almost $140 for the set because I couldn't find just a single B string for sale, and I've been lucky enough to snag all my regular TIJF sets for $30-45 when the price dips on Amazon. (Hint, leave a set in your cart all the time and when you see the price drop below $40, buy 2-3 sets!) We've all wasted money on dumb stuff before, but that dang .136 TIJF smarts extra hard for me!
I love the feel of the TIJFs B string on my fretless Martin Keith Elfin 5 The whole set really brought that bass to life, for me.
