Which strings for a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard?

[samkeen]

Hi guys,

I'm about to take possession of a fretless bass with a Brazilian Rosewood fingerboard. I've been in touch with one of the previous owners, who told me that it's possible to use roundwounds (which I'd prefer) as long as they're not stainless steel.

What materials do you recommend? Nickel's the obvious one, but would gold plated strings work too? I imagine the gold's fairly soft compared to stainless? What about coated strings?

Thanks all!

Sam

[henry norton]

I don't know about coated rounds (although I've heard good things about rotosound nexus), but most rounds should be fine on a rosewood board. Gold plating is usually a flashing of gold on nickel or stainless anyway, so they'll feel more or less the same as the equivalent plain strings. They will wear into the board more than flats or grounds will but rosewood is still pretty hard so you should get plenty of mileage.

Why don't you want to use stainless, out of interest?

[Davo-London]

Stainless steel strings are harder than nickel and will do more damage to the neck.

I would always encourage the use of roundwounds on fretless, because I love that sound. After a while the neck will start to groove inevitably if you play a lot. You can then just have the neck sanded down. Or you can do what I did with a rosewood fretless jazz neck and send it to HG Thor in the states and have him epoxy coat the neck. This way that lovely, irreplaceable, Brazilian rosewood neck will be preserved for ever.

Cheers
Davo

[Golchen]

[quote name='Davo-London' post='623662' date='Oct 12 2009, 01:12 AM'].... Or you can do what I did with a rosewood fretless jazz neck and send it to HG Thor in the states and have him epoxy coat the neck. This way that lovely, irreplaceable, Brazilian rosewood neck will be preserved for ever.

Cheers
Davo[/quote]


Did the Epoxy not change the feel/sound/look?

Note: surely there must be somewhere in the UK that could do that?

[samkeen]

Thanks for your posts guys. In the end I've opted for the Thomastik Infeld Jazz Roundwounds, they're nickel plated and are also quite finely wound, so shouldn't do much damage but still sound and feel nice.

[BassBod]

Thomastik rounds are very light - they are almost like 35-90 "slappers" strings in terms of feel, really floppy! I'd suggest the Thomastik flats for a rosewood board - yes, they are still very low tension, but if you set the action up a bit they're ok. They sound fantastic and do very little harm to the fingerboard.

Also consider plastic coated flats. The Status ones are very good (nice fretless whine) although the heavy Rotosound set are a bit dull and have weird intonation (or it could be me!)