Going back to rounds

Kerry, I know Iron Maiden is likely not your cup of Tea and maybe you are not even playing a Fender type bass. But some flats do kick a little butt with the right style or gear or attack etc. Kerry tell us and show us which bass you are using, good buddy.

 
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Kerry Brown said:
I’ve been using flats for a while now. I love the tone for practicing and recording. For live use they suck, literally. They don’t cut through the mix. I have to turn the bass way down and the high mids and treble way up then crank the volume to be heard in the mix. It sounds terrible, like loud farts. I put some round wounds on for tonight’s practice. I’ll report back tomorrow.
Click to expand...

I had another thought, Kerry.

I have a friend who used to gig in a 4 pc ROCK covers band who played a variety of mostly heavy 60's to late 90's tunes.
Everything from Sabbath to Led Zep ( one of their most played list of songs, Edgar Winter, Alice n Chains, Black Crowes, Nugent, and lots of others. His bass was a Music Man Stingray ( Active) and he used Flats. He had no trouble sound wise. Of course he used an Acoustic 360 bass head and one of those huge cabs with the 18 inch speaker in it yadda yadda.


 
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funny about bassists and strings...

I went with Rotosound Round Wound strings as soon as I heard about them.
Before that, I thought flat wounds were the way to go, because we didn't want finger hiss
from the bassist, now did we?

I also worshipped Thor and Odin, so you can see that this was a long time ago.
My amp was coal fired, if I remember.

Progress has been made for bassists in the last forty fifty years...
Now I use D'Addario half round strings on my fretless...
I love the tone of the fretless and don't want to chew up
my lovely rosewood fingerboard with round wound strings, but I also don't want to give up all those great highs.
So I don't have to. The half round strings are a fine compromise.

On my Fender J-bass, I used nothing but D'Addario round wound strings, 45-105. (and sold it with those on it).
Those gave me the tones I expected from my J-Bass. I don't understand why someone else
can't get great tone from a Fender Jazz Bass... especially if you own a graphic equalizer.
To me, it's one of those things old Leo got right the first time.
Like the Precision Bass too, although that needed a few mods from its first incarnation.

Anyway, it's funny to say this, as a user of "half round" strings or "ground round" as we say...
But when I rebuilt the mid-sixties Vox Cougar bass I gave to my daughter decades ago, I put a
set of Labella "Deep Tone" Beatle Bass flat wound strings on it, and it sounds great.
Vox Bass October 2020@100.jpeg
 
After a year of playing bass in a band I have drifted towards active basses. I have two, a Yamaha TRBX504 four string active bass and an Ibanez SRFF805 long scale fan fret 5 string. They all currently have round wounds although I am thinking of putting flat wounds back on the Tokai pbass. The Ibanez is my favourite all round. I run heavy strings with a .145 B string. I love the full, low, low sounds of the B around the middle of the neck. With the active EQ I can easily adjust the tone for different songs. The strings currently on it are D'Addario XL Pro Steel super long scale. Because of the different string lengths due to the fan fret neck finding strings that work is a bit of a challenge.
20220904_152305smaller.jpg
 
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