Your Favorite Strings

I agree with matching the strings to the guitar concept. Some basses just sound better with certain strings in my experience. That said, my favorite roundwounds are the TI superalloys. They just sound and feel great to me. My favorite flats are the EB cobalts. They have a real nice tone to them and don't sound muted like most flats do.

 

Rotosound and T-I are my favorites. If I cant afford them, I get Dadario XL

In the past Ive like Blue Steel, Slinky, DR Hibeam.

 

Here we are!

 

Lekker!

 

Sure is tasty

 

Used DR Sunbeams for a decade, recently switched to GHS Balanced Nickels and really enjoying them!

 

Optima Gold. Artilerist choice!

 

I love gooooold!

 

Haha, I like your signature so much!!!

 

Really, those strings are insane, both new and old. I think I have to thank you Hardy for them, right? Black Buzzard had them and I became addicted

 

What are the Optima Gold like? Anything you could compare them to?

 

Hard to describe. They are halfway between regular roundwound and Elixir. Smooth, but not slick. From the very beginning the Optima Gold are not too aggressive but they have a nice, clear tone. And a big advantage is that they do not die quickly, the always do their job. The clear tone will fade away but the fundamental tone stays.

 

Hard to say indeed. And it is interesting Hardy is describing the sound a bit different than myself, so probably they react to playing style too.
They are really thick and tensioned to start with. But it is very interesting, because they actually feel easier to play to me. But they are tensioned, very tensioned. Therefore, they have less movement, so yo you can do a pretty low action setup with zero fretbuzz. And I think this is the part where Hardy thinks they are not very aggressive. I think they are very aggressive, but it is hard(er) to get any fretbuzz out of them, so they sound clean. Elixirs, and flats sound clean because they have less harmonics, optima gold sound clean because they have no buzz. Slap them, and they sound like a church bell.
To me it was hard to balance left and right hand. I like to play hard, but I don't want to kill the sound. So with other strings, for a clean sound with sustain I needed a high action that was hurting my left hand playing. With optima, I have the same results with a really low action, so left hand plays really easy, while I can dig in with the right hand, and I think this is a very big deal to me

Longer sustain, both fatter and harmonic rich sound, easy to play since they don't bend with the right hand at all (tight), but low action for left hand. And I agree with Hardy, they lose some of their tone after a while, like any other string does, but the sound becomes just different, never dull. They don't lose the sustain and punch, so they indeed sound somehow Elixir-like after a while, but not Elixir rubbery tone, as they have a pretty tight character.
I used to change the strings each month, now I have a set over 2 years on my bass.

 

Also being harder to bend, they are really harder to play out of tune from accidental left hand bending, when we feel like gods on stage LOL

 

In my most active band, we down tune two full steps, making my bass tuned (low to high) G C F Bb Eb. Finding strings for this was a challenge, until I discovered Kalium Strings, with their balanced tension sets. I use a .166 for the low G.

Their customer service can at times leave a little to be desired, but their strings are awesome!

 

Elixirs have this plastic-y character to their attack which I actually like! They sound a bit "squared". Interesting account about the Optima Golds, they are definitely on my to-try list now.

 

But to be clear- Elixirs keep their NEW tone a lot. Optima not, but the OLD tone is not bad at all

I wanted to mentioned this because even if they are only gold plated, they cost like solid gold, haha!

 

Funny thing: yesterday we had our „rehearsal room party“. Exactly yesterday the Optima strings were at the point that they started to sound „old“. We played a lot songs and I wanted to compensate the loss of clear tone with digging harder into the strings. Now I have a blister, shayte! I spoke with our „sound sheriffs“ after the gig. These are mostly musicians too. They just shook their heads and mentioned that they heard every tone of the bass lines and that the bass was well audible, even at the bar. The room was crowded and is not that high. Means there is a good chance that at the back of the crowd the whole sound is dull, boomy, muffled. It was not. Sorry HPW, but Warwick EMP strings don’t manage this. They loose punch and volume, starting at the E string which will just fade away. Well done, Optima! But today I have to open a new pack of strings. 3rd set this year if I‘m right.

 

Yeah, exactly what I mean, bass is still there even with old strings, not too much difference in the mix.