That is easily the most whale looking bass. The last F-hole hole is its eye, and it’s smiling.
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You could be like me and not change string for nearly 20 years. It’ll still sound like a bass and play fine.
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Ah, that is indeed so cute 
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Ha! Good to hear that!! I thought about changing the strings a lot in the last few weeks, but somehow I like the tone of the old strings.
Is it flatwounds that you haven’t changed in 20 years or roundwounds?
Rounds – EB SuperSlinky, specifically. I did change them near the beginning of the B2B, but I had the some set on from shortly after when I got the bass originally until then. I also didn’t play at all consistently in that time with years going by w/o touching it.
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I got a new bass (Danelectro Longhorn) a little over a week ago, and it has fresh roundwounds. I have been playing with this bass over a week, and last night I played a little with my Squier jazz bass (which I bought this spring), and I couldn’t believe it how dead those strings sound now! The new bass sounds so bright!
I probably got very slowly used to the sound, and it probably changed so slowly and gradually that, without having another bass with fresh strings as base of comparison, I didn’t notice how flat the strings had become.
These 2 basses are very different, but I still notice the difference between bright and old flat tone between the strings.
I will soon feel the need to change my Squier’s strings. I have a set of new ones, but right now I feel like playing only with the new bass, so no hurry. The weather is getting cold and the inside air gets very dry here in the winter, so I will in a month or two give take the Squier’s strings off, clean and oil the fretboard, and put on the new strings.
Is it possible to restore dead strings? I have heard here and there of people boiling old strings. But would it help at all? These dead strings are clean as they can be. Do they get “dead” by being played too much, like, does their structural integrity get compromised? In that case boiling them would be a waste of time.
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As I understand it… boiling them can brighten them up some for a while. But it pretty much always makes them brittle so that they will fail shortly afterwards.
The trouble is you’ve got water trapped between the windings and the core. The water rusts the string core. You would need a way to purge all the water out of the strings after boiling them.
So short answer: Just replace the strings.
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LOL, when I took my P-Bass in to get a setup after sitting out in the open in basement/garage for 25 years or so, the guitar tech played it and said he’d have no problems gigging with it that night and actually sounded pretty decent. They were rounds of some unknown sort that were on it when I bought it well used and abused off of ebay back in 99 and never got around to learning until now. Due to a slightly twisted neck that was already an ill-fitting replacement and truss rod at max but not able to bring the relief down I replaced the neck to a short scale jazz style and made it a 30” instead of 35” so I had to get new strings anyway. La Bella Deep Talkin’ Flats.
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This^^^ 
The key to playing happiness is playing gear and music that make you happy. If it’s new strings every two months, cool. If it’s playing strings for a hell of a lot longer, still cool.
I use TI Jazz Rounds. One bass has had a set on it for way over a year; the other has had its set on for about a year now. I love how each bass plays and sounds. Just my take. YMMV
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I was under the impression that it was in part due to skin schmoo. It’s a bit silly, but this (metal) producer made a video on the topic and the scripting was… kind of point for the post-boiling section:
The above video was somehow the worst case scenario, but… eww. As neat as the idea of saving money on strings sounds I just can’t imagine this being more than a stopgap measure. Maybe some fancy coated string could do something about the oxidization problem, but that coating might not be designed to survive boiling.
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I recently changed strings on my Squier (did it myself and it was quite easy even if you need to know a few things if you don’t wanna screw it up). Instead of cutting them, I took them off and boiled them. And same as with your strings, the old ones were clean and no visible dirt came out while boiling. Afterwards, I dried and oiled them and put them in the package the new strings came with - so no idea how they sound now, but I thought it’s a good idea to keep them in the closet for emergency. I believe what some others already said: there’s some kind of material fatigue which causes the strings to sound dead (not only a dirt problem). Same as you, I didn’t realize the decay of the strings by their sound, most likely because this happens very slowly, but when I put the new strings on, the difference was totally evident.
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I played today with my Squier again, right after playing with the new Longhorn, and the Squier’s strings sound so old! Especially between the 5th and 9th frets of the E and A strings. It’s a muffled sound. I’ll have to change them. Maybe for some songs it is OK, but damn, how couldn’t I notice it before? 
It happened gradually and slowly during these last months, so I got used to it and didn’t notice it.
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I read somewhere that you should not use the pot you boiled it with afterwards, for cooking.
A much more gentle way is to use this:
https://www.amazon.de/dp/B007BNGV9S
@ed uses a professional ultrasonic cleaner, maybe he can comment too?
Of course, I started a thread about this topic:
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I’d been at that weird cutoff point with my Reverend (6 months on NYXL) vs my Yamaha SVB (3 months on NYXL). The Yamaha was feeling brighter and sharper for the new wave stuff I was mostly doing. But that could also easily be chalked up to the VERY different pickups. But I was suspecting the strings were getting near the end of their life.
Then I snapped my A string like an idiot and had to replace them. Way different now.
Yeah… brand new strings were too bright at full tone. Especially with a pick. Oddly, especially playing the open A string, but fretted wasn’t bad.
It’s calming down now.
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Good point. Actually the pickups on my Longhorn are very good, and they probably play a big part on the sound.
Hah it;s not really a professional cleaner but its not bad 
. From what I remember, it cost about 75 euros, which is around twice the price of a reasonable set of strings. It’s not the infinite money glitch I thought it would be, but I’ve used it to rescue three sets of strings so far so it’s kind of paid for itself…
Probably not now you mention it - unless you want some real heavy metal in your diet 
@Anja I used to soak the strings in meths (methylated spirits) for the night - the result is pretty good, but then you have to dispose of the meths
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Seriously just buy new strings
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Speaking of, I’m throwing a set of Elixir Nanoweb 50 - 105s on my Reverend tomorrow.
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sweeeeet
To my European ears this sounds like “Drill, baby, drill!”
There is a whole movement that tries to recycle, repair, upgrade and generally avoid waste here. Everything you revive means that it does not need to be produced and will not become waste quickly.
For example, I just revived three old PCs that cannot run Windows 10 cause of artificial restrictions (d@mn you, Microsoft!). With MacOS they run fine now, even faster than with Windows (NEVER quote me on that!). Usually, PCs like that are trown away … cause of “just buy new”…
Others participated in this little project and gave monitors, mice, WIFI/bluetooth cards and DDR4 RAM … and now they will find a place as a giveaway to people even poorer than me.
So it became kind of a social community project, where you meet interesting people too.
For example, I installed two of my old routers for a guest network at a Jazz café run by a very nice African guy just last week … and had an interesting conversation about Jazz, the soul of music and generally doing good thing and paying it forward…
For people near Hamburg:
The have live music, mostly Jazz though … and open Mic nights where everybody can perform…
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