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Or is it the increased thickness of the strings hurting his finger tips? If so you could look at a set of flatwounds - the feel is night and day in terms of comfort on the fingertips, but obviously gives a very different sound. Would depend what sort of stuff he's wanting to play I guess.
He plays mainly blues, rock and a bit of funk too. I think it is the gauge and the added strength needed to play the same stuff but on a full scale bass. .095 to .110 is quite a jump for a 14 year old.
If he doesn’t like them, you can flog them for a small loss quite easily.
I’d go for a set of D’Addario nickel 45-100 as a baseline and go from there.
Strings are so personal it's difficult to recommend, but saying that, if he liked 40-95 on a short scale the same gauge will have a bit more tension on long scale.
So I'd start with 40-95 or 40-100 long scale.
D'addario pro steel are my choice for roundwounds every time.
Flats are funny - most flats are stiffer at the same gauge as rounds - with the exception of Thomastik TI Flats and La Bella Low Tension flats. La Bella also do their deep talking flats too - they are proper old school 1950s strings and are still made the same way. Quite high tension though.
The TI flats and the La bella low tensions are however rather expensive compared to rounds, and other flats.
That being said - it's not unheard of to get 10 years out of a set of TI Flats, so they can still be very good value.
Ed Friedland (the Bass Whisperer) is well known for saying "Change your strings every 10 years, whether they need it or not!"
I tend to put rounds on Jazz type basses or other modern instruments, and flats on Precision types.
I’m so bored I might as well be listening to Pink Floyd
"Take these three items, some WD-40, a vise grip, and a roll of duct tape. Any man worth his salt can fix almost any problem with this stuff alone." - Walt Kowalski
"Only two things are infinite - the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe." - Albert Einstein
My understanding is the Swing Bass are Stainless Steel and the Roto Bass are Nickel.
I'd agree Swing Bass Steels lose their tone very quickly, and compared to Pro Steels they're noticeably rougher in feel.
I only have a .110 E string as part of a Billy Sheehan signature set. The idea is to maintain acceptable tension when a Hipshot D-Tuner is used.
So I'm currently playing bass in a band which plays kinda "Alt Rock" originals stuff. We're not heavy by any stretch, the main influence for the lead singer/main songwriter are probably female fronted groups like Evanescence/Halestorm etc, so think that sort of level of heaviness.
My bass is currently strung with Thomastik Flats (approx. 5 years old I believe, they were fitted by the previous owner). They feel great on the fingers, are super easy to play, and probably have a good few years of mileage left in them. However, I can't help thinking I could use a little more 'snap' or 'zing' to the sound to match the kind of music we play. I've considered fitting a set of Rounds to compare. But then I came across these 'Half Round' strings:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/DAddario-ENR71-Regular-045-100-Electric/dp/B0009FZWMW
The advertising shtick promises "Smooth Feel Without Compromising Bright Tone" which sounds like the perfect compromise. Anyone got any experience with these strings (or any other Half Rounds)? Advertising waffle too good to be true?
Chromes are brighter than TI’s as are the Fender flats. You could try tapewounds as well as they might suit your bands sound.
Course, if you try something and don’t like it, you can just stick the TIs back on!
If you don’t like them, then there’s a pretty active used market for bass strings because they last so long (especially flats)
I use the 45 - 100 ECB81 'regular light' set, but you can get a 'Custom Light' set ECB84 which are 40 - 100.
What I like about Chromes is that you get the comfort of flatwound but more of a brightness (not the same as roundwounds but heading in that direction)
Cheers guys.