Flat wounds on a Telecaster?

ROOG

Any ideas if this is a good idea or not? Love the sound of em on my arch top so what would they do for a tele.?

Alnico

You are sick.

You need to drink (more) beer or see a doctor.

ROOG

LOL! I thought someone might say at. Someone must have tried it?

Alnico

I must apologise now. I was only trying to raise a smile.

Serious answer - I think it might defeat the point of a bright twangy tele but hey, try it - you might find something that YOU like and that really is the whole point of anything with strings on it.

If you find a tone that sounds good to you, then rock on (Albeit flat, lifeless and duvet smothered !!!)

ROOG

Got one set kicking around, I think it has to be tried, my reservation is exactly as you describe @alnico duvets at the ready!

Alnico

The Gods of Alcohol and Rock n roll demand that you try it.

Rock on good sir.

You know what...............I bet it sounds great for motown stuff !

(Edited for terrible drunken spolling !!!)

ROOG

I understood!

DrBob

Alnico;343571" said:

The Gods of Alcohol and Rock n roll demand that you try it.Rock on good sir.You know what...............I bet it sounds great for motown stuff !(Edited for terrible drunken spolling !!!)

Did you get an early start ? I'm currently playing catchup... :-)

Van_Hayden

They're great - different but nicely balanced.

Alnico

DrBob said:

Alnico;343571" said:

The Gods of Alcohol and Rock n roll demand that you try it.Rock on good sir.You know what...............I bet it sounds great for motown stuff !(Edited for terrible drunken spolling !!!)

Did you get an early start ? I'm currently playing catchup... :-)

I got home at 7pm and drank in anger since. Currently done 2 bottles of Starapromen and moving onto Heineken now.

(Pssst. This does nothing for FLATwound experiemnst and the OP's desire to kill a telecaster.)

RocknRollDave

Alnico said:

I got home at 7pm and drank in anger.... moving onto Heineken now.

Heineken..? God, you ARE pissed, aren't you?

ROOG

No worries I'm on the wine now so I'll leave the rest ringing for tomorrow!

Alnico

RocknRollDave said:

Alnico said:

I got home at 7pm and drank in anger.... moving onto Heineken now.

Heineken..? God, you ARE pissed, aren't you?

Heinekene was on offr.

JDE

Seriously, I had flats on my Esquire for a good while. Hated them with gain but loved them for everything else.

davedave

Done it. Liked it.

Megii

Do play jazz with a tele sometimes, but don't like flatwounds - I find them just too rounded sounding, I'd rather have a bit more zing to the tone, a la Ted Greene (yeah right, in my dreams ). But that's just me of course...

koneguitarist

Kenny Vaughan of the Fabulous superlatives always uses flat wounds on tele's still gets plenty of twang!

ROOG

It's the wife's wedding anniversary today, so I'm under strict instructions not to touch a guitar, in fact I shouldn't even be here.

I shall go tele flat wound tomorrow

ROOG

Ok so I changed the strings on my tele to flat wounds and, the world didn’t stop turning.

My findings?

Well now I’ve thought about it, it is fairly obvious I suppose!

At the big end the strings do have a smoother warmer sound, yes I would go as far as saying a bit muffled.

At the thin end, well there is of course no change cos they are solid as before, so…

The guitar is noticeably jazzier low down and bright and twangy up top, in other words its not at all balanced anymore. Hey it might have its uses LOL.

One other thing the new strings I used are a heavier gauge than the ones they replaced so its got a meatier overall sound which is no bad thing.

So on balance it’s probably not a great idea, I’ll leave em on for a bit see if I grow to like the tone shift!

ROOG, doing daft things so that you don't have too!

Alnico

^

Wisdom awarded for boldly going where (Some) other Telecaster players fear to tread.

Keep on Rockin' in the Fleece World

EricTheWeary

koneguitarist said:

Kenny Vaughan of the Fabulous superlatives always uses flat wounds on tele's still gets plenty of twang!

presume you mean Jimmie Vaughan? Flat wounds but replaces the G with an unwound string. One of my very favourite guitarists so I have been tempted to do this ( on my strat, like Jimmie uses a strat) for a long time. Apologies if that is someone called Kenny Vaughan in the clip, can't YouTube ATM.