Strangs

Elixirs. sound great and last for months even with my sweaty hands. You'll have to get used to the slippery feeling but worth the effort. Even when they start looking bad they still sound good. 

forget coated strings and get yourself a set of flatwound strings... they outlast any string out there... the older they get the better they sound... I used to use roundwounds coated and uncoated... changed to flatwounds and never looked back... The feel, the tone, the longevity, the accuracy when tuning... Flat Wound strings are the only way to go.. I converted years ago and run nothing else.. I play all genre's of music from classic rock, metal to lite jazz and blues... these strings handle everything!

Harder to get a hold of are ground-wound strings, but they give the best of both worlds. Rotosound do them. I think D'Addario do them as well, but call them something different.

I never used the DR's, a guitarist friend loves their coated strings, but it seems like the coating comes off very quickly.

Originally posted by Heavy  LFB nailed it. I hadnt even thought about flats.  To answer a previous question final deciding factor is string noise, but longevity, tone, etc etc etc.

If you after little to no string talk...Flats are they way to go. Tone wise, the do sound different than rounds, of course. They're not as "bright" sounding, but they got THUMP!!!

Listen to any of the "funk" groups from the late 60's and 70's to get an idea of the tone. Larry Graham (Sly & the Family Stone), Randy Jackson (Jackson 5) are a couple of flat users from back in the day.

Dont let the term "thump" scare you.. flats are punchy and deep with a rolled off high end, all which can be manipulated by your amps EQ if your running passive or in combination with your onboard preamp especially if you have a sweet onboard preamp.. you can get any tone out of flats... but regardless, they will always remain punchy and retain thier "thump" ... Flats do have a very good punch for rock, jazz and country... you'll love the smooth slick feeling on your fingers.. great for sliding in and out from note to note... I love how the round wound squeeking is gone and all of my work is quiet .. another thing I've noticed.. the sound guy that we had a while back came up to me shortly after I changed to flats told me "hey i don't know what you've dialed in there but try to remember it bc you have found a sweet spot there.. says I was cutting through the mix with any extra volume" Hell Yeah!

Ok I got the flats and they are incredible, except some idiot cut my G string too short. Im going to try rigging it up tomorrow so i dont have to trash the string. Suggestions?

Who uses the G string? Just leave the old one on.

 I once tried to save a few bucks when I had a short string, by rigging it, and I broke the nut. Definitely wasn't worth it.

The only safe way I can think of is by drilling a hole in the headstock and moving the tuner down, assuming your using a 4 in line headstock.



Crappy photoshopping to make a point

Actually if you cut the top of the headstock to size it would quite musicman-ish.

I've never seen a good way of bonding a string to a string, I mean you could try twisting an old one around it and soldering the twisted bond, but I wouldn't recommend it. If in the unlikely event you have a separate tailpiece and bridge, you could take an old ball end with a length of string, feed it through the new ball end, then back through the tailpiece, but not many basses have the separate tailpiece and saddles nowadays. For sure the playing part should be one unbroken piece, but it sounds like you've got a wrap and a half, isn't that enough for a stable tuning?

You could always do the new hole as part of a 4 to 5 string conversion. Weirdly, I saw a bass in Flores once, that someone had converted from a 5 string into a 4 string, and in the process, rather than using the existing holes, they saw fit to drill new ones, it was uglily done, and no mistake. Could well still be there.

My only thought would be it'll work on a 2+2 headstock bass or a shorter scale bass, so maybe you can find someone to swap with? If you know someone else that uses flatwounds, and doesn't have a Fender style headstock.