NBD? Not really, but almost

[stewblack]

I received a PJ Squier in a trade and I believe both parties were content with the exchange. 

However as time wore on I found I reached for the instrument with decreasing frequency. 

It looks lovely, balances and plays well, and I really like the neck which is often the most important factor for me. 

And yet, there was something missing. So I took it out a few times. Eventually I decided it suffered a want of character, a sort flimsy lack of substance.

Extremely difficult to put into words but a tangible lack nonetheless. Difficult to describe perhaps,  but happily very simple to resolve. 

£13.99 including delivery for a set of Adagio flatwounds. And now I have a new bass. Seriously. It has been transformed. 

At rehearsal last night it growled, snarled and thumped where previously it had mewed like a sickly kitten. 

I appreciate we all have our favourite strings and indeed favourites for different basses. My Bruce Thomas Profile delights in its Stadium Elites for example. I post this less as an endorsement of these strings (although I also use and love their acoustic bronze) but more as a warning to others.

Don't burn the house down when all it might need is a coat of paint. I have parted company with other instruments when in hindsight, perhaps they just had incompatible strings. 

 

 

[Woodinblack]

I have tried several times to get into flatwounds and I really can't, tried them on the fretless and on stringed basses, but nothing, went through a couple of packs of chromes at various times.

Got some tape wounds, and they sort of worked for somethings, but took them off the maruschyk as they were too soft and put them on the G&L which I don't use much. I think they might work there. I can't say they are going to become a favourite, but I don't hate them there, and it is the first time I haven't!

[machinehead]

You're so right stewblack.  Even a new set of exactly the same strings can have a massive effect on a bass.  It's a thing that's often overlooked by beginners and even by some more experienced players too.

I discovered a while ago that my American Standard Jaguar (PJ) is a very different sounding instrument with Ti flats than round wounds.  Perhaps that's not really surprising but what did surprise me was just how much richer and ballsier it became.

A good post.

Frank.

[police squad]

I once had a custom built bass, lovely neck, great sound.

It lacked...........................don't know. It was rattly and just a bit rattly

I took it to my local luthier, 'Have a look at this Andy' 

Andy fret dressed it. It still fkn rattled.

Andy suggested changing the strings (the strings on it were new)

So I put a set of my trusted RS66 on it

 

Rattle? What rattle?

Strings, yeah, they're quite important really

[hooky_lowdown]

Fender flats sound great on a Squier pj, especially the older one's.

It took me a few years of buying and selling basses, to realise it's often not the bass, it's the strings which make the sound I like. Since then I've gone through all sorts of strings, an expensive excercise, but now as long as the bass has a neck I like, is well made and is balanced, I know the strings I like best, I just put the two together and nail the sound I like. 

Having had nice fenders and alike in the past, I now have two (very) cheap basses, a Yamaha and an Ibanez both with my preferred flats and half rounds, and I'm just as happy with both, if not more so than the fenders.