Flat wound vs round wound strings

Stringjoy has a similar product. I got a bottle last time I ordered strings from them. I like it a little better than FastFret. I don’t know if it does any better a job, but it’s all natural and smells like coconuts and cranberries, so that’s cool :sunglasses:

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Back to the topic at hand, my P-bass is in for a setup & I supplied La Bella 760FM flats, .49-109, to give them a try. It’s going to be very different from the NYXLs on my jazz bass. I like the high end overtones on the NYXL roundwounds, but flats on a P-bass is such a classic combination that I felt like I had to give it a go. I’ll give y’all a full report once I’ve had a chance to play it a bit.

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Hands on crocs, off with socks.

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String Fuel definitely does lube the strings, it has mineral oil in it. Its virtually the same as fast fret but with a better applicator (and a nicer smell). I use it for cleaning, I don’t care so much about the lube. I also keep it in a Ziploc bag so it doesn’t dry out as fast.

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Educate me please, why would you want oily strings? Cleaning, sure, makes sense; but for normal use? Yuck :slight_smile:

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They are not oily.
You apply and wipe excess.
It cleans and protects strings while transferring slight amounts to hands to help with feel and blisters. The feel is quite nice and subtle.

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I wouldn’t but I don’t think that’s the purpose of this product. To me, the goal is to quiet down the rounds that I just put on my ESP. I can probably get used to the roughness eventually, but that hideous scraping noise is annoying. Plus, I’m hoping it eliminates the stickiness of the rounds to make sliding smoother.

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Interesting. Have blisters been a problem for you with bass?

I could definitely see them with slap/pop, but for normal fingerstyle - bass is pretty easy on the skin. At least in my experience. Maybe I need to slide more.

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You have some very interesting skin on your fingers @howard. Rounds are gentle on your skin, and silky smooth flats are sticky. Polar opposite of my experience (and I think that of most bassists) :smiley_cat:

Rounds stick to my fingers when I release, and sliding is torturous , even for just a couple of frets. Flats are heavenly to the touch for me.

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I must say, these RotoSound RB45 strings I just put on the ESP are way less abrasive than any rounds I have played before. I’m going to play on them for awhile and see if I can build up some callous on my fingers. Maybe someday I’ll even be able to touch corduroy (shudder).

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No, I use Fast-Fret :upside_down_face:

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So funny, I think they are the most abrasive I have felt (not that I have felt a lot). The La Bella rounds are very gentle (for a round).
I really really love the sound off of them on the jazz bass.

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Most bassists don’t use flats at all :slight_smile:

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I think it is very hard to compare a working bassist to a hobbist in this forum, meaning people who are skewed towards 50 and up picking up bass for the first time. Of course there are others, but there are a lot of those here. Flats make sense being more popular in this crowd becuase they are more forgiving on the frets sound wise and a beginner sounds a bit better on them. I am happily adding rounds to the basses I have to ‘round out’ tonal options. They also sound better now that I play better. Sure, we could suck it up and learn to play rounds out of the gate, but we want quicker gratification when the clock has less hours in the day.

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I was referring to your comment about rounds being gentle to your skin

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You referring to the RotoSound RB45s I just put on?

That’s interesting. In actuality, my only point of reference is the rounds that come with the basses I’ve purchased. Maybe the manufacturers’ cheapass strings they put on them are the most abrasive on the planet. These are much gentler than any of those that I’ve tried.

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It’s not so much that rounds are (vs flats); it’s that bass strings in general are not hard on the fingers, at least in my experience. I barely got callouses at all from bass.

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That’s because you add them later in you DAW, with a plugin of course :rofl:

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Perhaps they are very differnt than their SS cousins I put on…now I have to buy a set of RB45s and see!

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That’s also interesting because usually stainless rounds are rougher feeling than nickel rounds. At least the ones I have used.

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