Well, 2023 was a very busy year for me, both "new bass" and "new string" wise. I finally managed to fill the few remaining empty spots in my herd, and found a fretless bass that I discovered I couldn't live without. Which created a new category in the herd, and by this summer - when the Birdsong Fusion fretless is finished - there will be 3 more fretless basses in the herd. This madness has got to stop...
As for new strings? With one exception, every bass I bought in 2023 got new strings - some got a couple of sets, before I found the right ones. And, although I never bothered much with intonation (given what I play most of the time, "close enough" was good), with a fretless? Gotta be intonated. So, I wound up going through the entire herd, and set the intonation on all of them. Which, it turned out, caused some string changes, too. So, basses with new strings in 2023...
- Hofner 500/2 Club Bass. A German, NOS 2017 Sunburst model. I
thought the strings were the factory flats, but... they are identical in every way to the backup set of Pyramid Gold Flats that I bought. Length, silk color, feel, gauge - everything. But, they sound wonderful, so there they will stay...
- Epiphone Jack Casady Bass. Don't know what kind of rounds it came with, but after the function check? It wears La Bella 760FGS Gold Flats now...Sound great on this bass, but... the brass outer wrap is... not
sticky; it's
grabby. Brass is notorious for that; these strings are no exception. I'm tempted to try the vaseline trick on them; we'll see...
- Rick 4001. When I decided - very reluctantly - to sell it, in early 2023, I replaced the almost dead Rick Light Gauge Nickel Rounds with a set of EB Hybrid Slinkys. Within 2 weeks of posting it on Reverb, it was competing with 25 other lefty 4001's. I finally gave up, and brought it home. Because it's prone to the neck problem that some older 4001's get, I put a very low tension set of Dogal JC106A "Jaco" Carbonsteel flats on it. Dogal says the total tension for the set is 55lbs. - and I believe it. But, they feel and sound great; so I'm happy...
- Danelectro DC59 Pro. It had Fender 9050L's on it for years, and I was very happy with that setup. But, after I put the Rick 4001 on consignment, I had the Dogal "Jaco" Flats - but nothing to put them on. So, just to see if they performed as advertised? I put them on the Dano. They are everything Dogal says they are, but... they don't sound as good on a Dano as the Fenders did. So, when the Rick came back home? The Rick got the strings I'd bought for it in the first place, and the Dano got it's 9050L's back...
- Tokai TB48 Thunderbird. It had rounds on it when I got it, so of course they had to go. I'm pretty sure they were Roto Swing Bass 66's, too - and I despise those things. It gave me immense satisfaction to replace them with Optima 4099RL "Chromes". Ahh... the sound, the smoothness...
- Fury Anthem lined fretless. My first fretless bass. I fell in love with it, about 2 minutes after I plugged it in. But, finding strings to replace the Gawdawful tapes (roughest strings I ever played) it came with, became a struggle. It's a medium scale bass (my first one of those, too), but I have several basses that need medium scale strings. So, I had a pretty good selection to choose from. Fury basses and guitars have a trademark headstock that looks like the tooth from a T-Rex; slightly curved, very tapered, and very long. Of all the strings I tried? One set had a G string that didn't reach the G tuner. One set had an E string that would have had 3 wraps of the speaking part of the string on the tuner. One set had silks that went 3 inches down past the nut. However, the set of TIJF 324 Jazz Flats fit just fine. Problem was, they sounded awful on that bass. I got sounds that I'd honestly never heard from a bass - and I've been playing for over 50 years. I had a suspicion that, since all Fury's are custom made, with custom, hand-wound pickups, that - combined with it being a fretless - this one was intended to emulate an upright bass. Fortunately, a set of Roto TruBass88m Tapewounds fit it like they were made for it; and yes; the Anthem bass now sounds about as much like an upright bass as an electric bass guitar is ever going to. And, holy bejeezus, is it ever fun to play...
- G&L Kiloton Lined Fretless. Not a Tribute; a lefty from the Custom Shop in Fullerton. Why they put D'Addario EXL170 rounds on it is beyond me, but they weren't on it long. A set of La Bella LTF-4A Flexible Flats are the perfect strings for this bass, AFAIC...
- Guild Starfire I. It came to me from the factory with some kind of medium scale rounds. Needless to say, I lost no time replacing those... things... with a set of GHS 3120M Precision Flats. They suit the Guild to a T, IMO...
- Kramer 450B. When I was intonating all the basses, I discovered that I had the scale length set wrong. The thing has a zero fret - and I wasn't paying attention, several years ago, when I replaced the original rounds with Optima 4099RL "Chromes". Much as I liked them, when I reset the scale length? The ball end silks wound up on the bridge saddles, so... reluctantly, off they came. But, La Bella 760FS DTF's don't have ball end silks, and they sound pretty damn good on an aluminum-necked Kramer with insanely hot pickups; so...
So, yeah; what with 5 new/new-to-me basses needing new strings, and others having their strings changed for one reason or another? My work bench and my Peterson Strobo-flip tuner got a real work out in 2023. Actually, I didn't finish the mass intonation marathon until last Saturday night. Now I get to work on the 4 guitars, and the long scale banjo...
