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What strings did Cliff Burton use???

M

metallibass95

Apr 7, 2009
126
2
#1
Does anybody out there know what strings Cliff Burton used? I used to use Ernie Ball nickels and got curious as to what strings he used. From all the strings I have tried at first I got close to his sound with a set of DR Sunbeams because of the low end growl and the smoothness on the highs. But then I heard rumors that Cliff used heavy Rotosound strings. So I got the heaviest set of Rotosound steel strings I could and the sound was almost exact to his. But not sure if he used steel, nickel, and i'm not even 100% sure what brand he actually did use. Does anybody out there know exactly what he used?
 
#5
infamusblkdeath said:
as far as i know he used the same strings you have.you do have the 66's right?
Click to expand...

Yea its RS66LE, its the biggest round wound strings you can get from Rotosound. But the main thing is that I just heard heavy Rotosound strings, so I looked for the heaviest round wounds I could find and bought them, not knowing that Rotosound also made nickel strings, I thought Rotosound only did steel roundwounds, so all this time I thought Cliff Burton used steel strings but he may use nickel, I honestly don't know exactly what he uses.
 
#7
metallibass95 said:
Yea its RS66LE, its the biggest round wound strings you can get from Rotosound. But the main thing is that I just heard heavy Rotosound strings, so I looked for the heaviest round wounds I could find and bought them, not knowing that Rotosound also made nickel strings, I thought Rotosound only did steel roundwounds, so all this time I thought Cliff Burton used steel strings but he may use nickel, I honestly don't know exactly what he uses.
Click to expand...

i'm positive he used the ones you have.i'm pretty sure he didn't use the nickel ones or anything like that.i looked around on a few different sites and they didn't say anything,but i do remember looking a while back somewhere,and they said he used the 66LE's.
 
#11
metallibass95 said:
Awsome video man and thanks for the info. It got me wondering though, He did say Rotosound Roundwound but he didn't say steel or nickel. All this time I thought he used the same exact Rotosound steel strings I got. But check these pics out of Cliff's ric in this forum.

http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=532921

From looking at those pics it clearly looks like those are nickel strings instead of steel strings, so I pretty much think Cliff Burton's exact strings have been narrowed down to the heaviest set of Rotosound roundwound nickel strings that Rotosound makes. Pretty wild.
Click to expand...

Out of curiosity, what makes you believe that he was using nickel? That photo is pretty grainy IMO...:hmm:
 
#15
metallibass95 said:
Because I have alot of experience switching back and fourth between nickel and steel strings and anybody with experience in both would know that steel strings are much much darker than nickel strings. It is actually very easy to tell in the pics that they are nickel. Nickel strings are like a bright chrome looking color where as steel strings are more of a dark grey color.
Click to expand...

I've been playing bass for quite a few years now and would consider myself "experienced". ;) To me, the picture is too grainy to be making such an assumption, but I could always be wrong. Of course, it doesn't help that I never pay much attention to strings aside from feel and silk wrappings. YMMV.
 

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