I have been thinking about putting a set of these on my 51 P Bass clone but am a little leary because I have read that they are extremely high tension. Have any of you tried them and if so what can you tell me about them? I’m curious about any adjustments you may have had to make to your bass and also if they are harder to play because of the tension.
I don’t know anything about those strings… but for a .110 to a .052 set, and flatwounds besides, I have no doubt it would be pretty high tension.
You could deal with it in truss rod adjustments - but my issue with high tension is how it feels against my right hand fingers.
But I bet they also sound suuuuuper fat and awesome.
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Yeah, I’m thinking both my hands will get a good workout with these.
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Well, I bit the bullet and bought a set of these. I just put them on my P bass. I had to make a little over a quarter turn adjustment on the truss rod, but they sound amazing. I may have to rename my P bass Thumper. 
The heavy gauges don’t seem too bad, but then, I have a set of EB Power Slinky’s (50-135) on my 5 string, so I’m used to playing bridge cables.
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Killlller. I’ll be it sounds so deep and wonderful. Good move.
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@joeike Any chance you could upload a sample of how it sounds?
I will if I can figure out how to record my amp on my computer. I’ve been looking at getting a Behringer interface which would make it fairly simple.
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I run these strings on my MIJ '63 reissue Fender P bass, like in this video:
I’ve never had an issue with the neck or trussrod. But ALSO - these are not the strings to use if you want to have an easy-to-play bass with low action. James Jamerson made these strings famous (along with Duck Dunn and others), and there are stories in the Standing in the Shadows book about how hard his bass was to play, other people found it impossible apparently.
So I’ve surrended to having gnarly high action and string tension on that bass - I actually welcome it! The harder it is to play, the less notes I’ll play, which is good for that tone/style. I stuck some foam in the bridge too to complete the package:
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I’m really liking them so far. I just picked up a Focusrite Solo so hopefully I’ll be able to post a sound clip soon.
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I recorded my 51 P bass clone with these strings on Ableton Lite and created a WAV file but I can’t figure out how to post it. I’m hoping @JoshFossgreen can give me some pointers unless either @eric.kiser or @Gio know how to do so on here.
@joeike - to post audio here, you have to host it somewhere else. The best places we’ve found are YouTube and Soundcloud. There’s others - you could make a bandcamp page, or use an audio player on your own website if you’re savvy like that.
But for what we do with posting and sharing, those two sites are the ones. It’s free to make an account and start uploading, then just link to it here on its own line of text in the forum and the wav file link should appear for all to enjoy!
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@joeike I’m trying to write up a step by step method of creating a simple free blog site for doing this. But, that’s going to take some time. For now, the easiest seems to be what @Gio posted.
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Thank you both! I’ll try to get that done this evening if I have time.
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Okay, here goes. First I played each string open. Next I played “Song For My Father” starting at the 10th fret on the E string ( D ) and then again starting at the 10th fret on the D string ( C ). After that I played “House Of The Rising Sun”. Hopefully that will give you a good sample of what these sound like. I was plugged directly into the interface and didn’t apply any filters. There’s a little noise on the track because it’s a single coil bass so I get some hum. Also, I had the tone rolled completely off.
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It’s also kind of loud. I probably should have led with that. 
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Oh, man! I just had a chance to listen to this. That smooth round tone has some sexiness to it! By chance do you have any distortion? I’ve always wanted to hear what flatwounds sound like distorted.
I have a Behringer TO800, which is their clone of the Ibanez TS9 Tube Screamer. I’ll try running through my pedal board to the interface and see how that works.
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Okay, I went all the way back to U2’s “With Or Without You” from Module 2 for this sound sample. First I played it normally, the with my overdrive set at about 1-1:30, which is where I normally keep it set. Then I played it both ways an octave higher to hit the D and G strings. Then I went back and did both sets with the overdrive cranked all the way up. I think it sounds pretty sweet. 
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Pretty cool! Thanks for posting that. The TO800/TS9 was a lot more subtle than I expected.
It is. For me that’s a good thing because it’s what I was looking for.
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