funkle

Ok, I’ve played on these a couple of weeks. They’ve settled in. I’ve played an hour or more on these most days. They have a great feel. Not hard to fret, very flexible. I like DRs for this a lot, the round core is a great feel. A lot of the high end has worn off for me. I didn’t expect them to mellow quite this fast. The tone is acceptable but they have a strange sort of dulled tone - it kind of sounds like they are wrapped in something. Which, I guess, the core wrap wire is. I’m not sure I’m convinced of these over other DR steels. They feel better than Elixirs - lower tension - but for my chemistry, they don’t seem to stay brighter any longer. I probably prefer Fat Beams overall. I’ve been doing a lot of string dating on other basses. Rotosound Ultramags 40-100s are wonderful sounding but very tense feeling on my left hand, much like Elixirs. I had to take them off, they were noticeably hard to fret. But they sound a bit like Swing bass strings, very crunchy and good low end. Bizarre how different they feel to Roto steels of the same gauge and reported tension. Rotosound SM66s (40-100 Swing Bass set) feel amazing in terms of tension and sound utterly amazing when they go on, but I seem to kill them off after a couple of weeks. They are acceptably mellow now but have kind of lost the magic of the beginning days. I guess I’d use these if I was going to change strings frequently and had more time and money. I literally have never heard my maple neck P bass sound as good as when these went on. Great sound. I’m either going to try DR Pure Blues 40-100 or TI Superalloys next. I think the Pure Blues ‘Quantum Nickel’ is probably type 52 Alloy, like the Ultramags and the Superalloys. It seems hard to get the magic triad of ‘sounds like steel, feels like nickel’, acceptable string tension, and tone durability. Ah well.

I have a Goodwood right now. I’m taking it out on a gig tomorrow, then a ceilidh gig in the weekends after that. My testing at home is positive. It’s very similar to my Silverstone in sound, which is exactly what I want. (The Silverstone has a little bit more low end than the Monza or Monaco, which I like.) It’s louder than the 8” prototype Stevie kindly let me put through its paces. Tomorrow is with drummer and loud guitar outside. So it should push it reasonably hard. I’ll report back after tomorrow.

Matt was very patient with courier issues when buying some tuners from me! Easy communications and plenty of good humour. Very much appreciated Matt. Pete