chrkelly

Hire a proper Stevenson case and take your German bass. Those styrofoam things are great for domestic touring but there's no way I'd trust one in the hold of a plane. Or better still, hire a bass out there. Saves a lot of grief & excess bagged fees, especially if you were only going to bring a crap knockaround anyway.

[quote name='bob_pickard' post='1373626' date='Sep 14 2011, 07:46 PM']Hello, as some of you may know I play in a 50s rock & roll band, use a mag pickup and regularly do 3 hour sets and all that jazz or errm rock and roll.. Anyway I currently use a Spiro Weichs, mixture of slap and pizz (mostly pizz) and generally get blisters every gig and practice even after two years or so - sometimes I get away with it, mostly not! So is there a lower tension magnetic string I coud try? I don't want to go the piezo route, been there got fed up with the feedback [/quote] You'll get blisters using any string if your technique isn't sorted. I doubt going lower tension will help, it'll just take all the balls out of your sound. Practice in front of a mirror and take a good look at your right hand, you'll be putting in way too much effort getting the string to speak. Concentrate on getting as big a sound as possible but with as little movement in your hand & fingers as possible. It's all that wasted effort that's giving you blisters.

Go for it Jake. Anytime I play anything other than a p, it just feels like there's something missing. Nothing sits in a track so well. This will make you're mind up [url="http://youtu.be/ygCeBoYD9ps"]Chicken Grease[/url]

[quote name='73Jazz' post='1268491' date='Jun 14 2011, 12:11 PM']Definitely not. I know Labellas very well and also know the difference between broken in strings and new strings. but i also recognize the difference between two different production runs. It seems they use 2 different materials. And all my friends confirm if they have old sets they are dull and blunt and new sets are shiny and unfortunately not the same sound anymore.[/quote] I really hope that's not the case. I really love the old ones too. The p bass I've tried the new ones on is also new to me so I can't compare them properly at the moment. Fingers crossed I can get another 10 years out of the old ones before they lose their tuning.

I think it's just down to brand new strings versus ones that you've played for many years. I recently bought a FS gauge set for a new bass and noticed how shiny they were too. My other ones are about 5 years old and look really dull. On the bass though they react exactly the same as the old ones and definitely have the same sound characteristics, just a bit stiffer sounding and brighter (again down to being brand new). Give them 6 months and I'm sure they'll look and sound like the old ones.

Bump