Just lose the crappy strings. Life will be much better.
On a similar note (no pun intended), I just finished a practice session on my P with TI flats. They initially weren’t as slick as I was used to, but, after a couple of hours, they’re smooth and slippery. And that’s with playing with freshly washed hands, every time.
Seriously, get some quality strings.
My TI flats will never come off my 54P. I did notice that as they aged, (a couple of months) that the notes just bloom and there is no harshness, buzz, rattle etc. And they stay in tune like a mofo.
I’m living this reality.
They are just a different level of string. Hard to describe. At first they almost sound too twangy (?) It doesn’t take long til they mellow and stabilize into beautiful sounding strings. Jazz rounds are just as good in the round wound family.
Definitely this 
I have my old set of GHS Precision Flats. For tits and pickles I think I’ll put th on the Peavey Patriot. Right now it’s sporting Billy Sheehan rounds, and that’s a great string too, if you like a heavier gauge of zing-zing. I love Roto strings.
Their flats are quite good
In what seems to be an endless search for a tone I like on my G&L Tribute L-2000 so far GHS Pressure Wound Rounds are so far the winner but I happened to get my hands on a set of D’Addario half rounds and they sound different, much closer to flats than rounds but yet not quite like neither one of the two. If it wasn’t because I just had my p-bass professionally setup I’d be really curious to try those strings on it but it sounds great the way it is. It happened to coincide with this video.
I’ll join in. Recently decided to try out flats on my Fender Jazz and it was a game changer considering I mostly prefer to play older (60s 70s etc) music. All three of my bass heroes, Duck, Kaye, and Dart all tend to use flats for their stuff.
I still keep rounds on my Spector Dimension…partially because of the tone I prefer when using that bass and equally because finding flats that will fit a multi-scale is a pain.
I’ll likely put rounds on my 5 string when I ultimately get one and if I ever get a fretless, it would be crazy to put anything other than flats or even coated flats on that…in my naive opinion.
2 months ago, after using Rotosound RS77 before, I put a set of TI jazz flats on my Yamaha.
They are divine and now my favourite string. The sounds they can create are almost contradictory in nature.
If you brush them over gently, they will produce a smooth mellow sound, close to a fretless in my opinion.
Smack them hard (fingerstyle) into the fretboard and they will growl.
Pluck them hard horizontally (along the body) and you get a nice hard punch that quickly settles into a deep sound.
They are soft (in a good way) and the playability is excellent. Roto flats compared to them feel like rebar 
Ultra smooth for slides, also because of the softness they require less fretting force so the slide sounds smoother.
The slight difference in gauge isn’t noticeble to me.
They are, in my case, a much louder string than RS77, I think the material reacts better with pickups.
That seems to be the common (and sane) choice, but many fretless players have round wounds on their basses. Some say, rounds are rougher on the fingerboard, but there is no real consensus on that. In the end, as always, you’ll have to experiment and trust your ears what you like best.
(NB: I have round wounds on my fretless)
I’ll leave that here:
tl;dr: yes you can clearly hear the difference there even in the mix 
I mean, could anyone not hear the difference there? Was quite pronounced to me, on both the attack and overall tone.
But would this matter to most people? Of course not.
If you play a fretless bass properly, there’s no reason not to put rounds on it if you like that mwah sound. If you play it like a guitar with lots of bends and the wrong vibrato, then sure it won’t last long 
I figure with fretless the focus is going to be more on sliding and such. The flats would help keep more of the skin on your fingers as well as reduce the SCHRRRRRRCH sound on the slides.
To each their own, though.
Problem is this is easily overdone. At least, it can wear off pretty quickly… 
To me that’s like clacking or the squeaking on an acoustic guitar, just part of the ambiance
String noise rules. Learn to love it. Neat humanizing factor when in the mix.
Hi guys, pretty new to this topic - well, I’ve become obsessed somehow with the sound of the classic Precision + flatwounds; then I went for a cheapo option: Squier Sonic Precision. It sounded weird with rounds (came with it) so purchased the cheapest flats (Harely Benton 45 - 100), it went to pretty decent. Then had the option for a used pickup set (told to be this: F1 for P Bass – Epic Custom Shop ) and gotten even better. Not saying fully the sought for sound but very decent P.
Now I have broken the G string when upgrading the pickup, and wanted to replace the scratch plate anyhow so ordered a set of Fender flats (9050, 50-100) and as I have received the scratch plate I have done the replacement of it and the new strings installed as well:
Before (white) and after (black marble):
Now the sad truth: it is sooooo “zingy”, no real low E sound but lost all depth and gained a lot of “roundwoundy” components to the sound…
Is this just this 9050 that sounds like this, or should I be patient and it’ll become the good P sound with time?
Last question: what would be the really perfect sounding flatwound string set recommended for the Precision (reggae, Motown etc.)?
