Stingraymund
Well-known member
People on online forums seem to marvel at stringing roundwounds on their fretless. So I tried it myself, seeing what all the fuss is about, putting a spare set of EB Super Slinky 5s (minus the .125 B string) on my fretless Stingray4.
Though there was slightly more mwah, it wasn't a whole lot more. Worse yet, the nickel strings sounded kind of "springy" and gave me some artificial "reverb" (like on a spring reverb) when strings would sustain. Even worse, I got buzz (of the radiomagnetic interference kind, not fret buzz of course) that made this bass rather noisy. And worst of all, the sexiness of sliding up and down flatwound strings was gone.
The only thing good was that the slap tone sounded better (of course), but doing it repeatedly no doubt would damage my fingerboard. I think I damaged the fingerboard a little while winding the string, curring a slight groove into the wood with the E string, but fortunately the groove wasn't anywhere where I would "fret" the string.
I'm back to the flatwounds...
Though there was slightly more mwah, it wasn't a whole lot more. Worse yet, the nickel strings sounded kind of "springy" and gave me some artificial "reverb" (like on a spring reverb) when strings would sustain. Even worse, I got buzz (of the radiomagnetic interference kind, not fret buzz of course) that made this bass rather noisy. And worst of all, the sexiness of sliding up and down flatwound strings was gone.
The only thing good was that the slap tone sounded better (of course), but doing it repeatedly no doubt would damage my fingerboard. I think I damaged the fingerboard a little while winding the string, curring a slight groove into the wood with the E string, but fortunately the groove wasn't anywhere where I would "fret" the string.
I'm back to the flatwounds...
