Bass string sound characteristics

The strings you strap to your bass play a very significant role in the overall sound equation. I would argue that your strings are possibly the most significant factor affecting the tone. It also happens to be one of the least expensive ways to change and hopefully improve the voice of your bass.

I believe that every bass guitar is unique. I mean that even the same make and model can sound different. Wood by nature is inherently unique. The grain, density, cut of a piece of wood is like a fingerprint. So is it not possible that these factors make one bass resonate differently than another bass of the same make and model? The strings on your bass are what sets these resonances in motion. Only your ears can really tell you when you've found the right strings for your bass - I mean your unique, one and only bass guitar.

I've been been playing electric bass for 16 years now. In that time I have tried all kinds of strings on my basses. There is so many types and brands to chose from these days it's hard to decide. For bass players, strings are pretty expensive compared to our friendly 6 stringed guitar cousins.

It's definitely a lot cheaper for a guitar player to cough up 6 bucks for a new set of strings on a weekly basis. For a bass you are looking at shelling out anywhere for $25 to $50 just to replace a set of slowly dying strings. I think this makes a bass player think long and hard about the risks of trying out a different set. The guitar players have the advantage here. They can easily experiment with many types, gauges and brands to find the set that make their guitar come to life. In the end, it's an expensive experimentation for bass but well worth it in my opinion.

As for the strings themselves, there are basically four attributes of a bass string that influence the sound: gauge, material, winding, and condition.

The gauge of your strings effects your tone in a few ways. For a heavier gauge string, the most obvious effect is that your tone will have more low end presence or bass. A lighter gauge will have a brighter overall response. Heavier gauges will also sustain longer than a lighter gauge. So if you want big lows with lot's of sustain you might want to try some heavier strings. I'd say anything over 105 on an E string is approaching the heavy side.

A side note about switching from light to heavy or vice versa.
The heavier the string the slower it vibrates under a certain tension. So to get a heavier string to vibrate at around 40 Hz or E, you need to apply more tension. The more tension you apply to all strings will add more concavity to the relief on your neck. This has two effects: the height of your action increases and; your fretted bass will require intonation. More on how to do all this in a future post.

The two most common materials used for making string windings are nickel and stainless steel. Nickel wound strings are definitely darker sounding than stainless steel wound strings. Nickel is a great material as it doesn't corrode. As a result, your fingers slide over the string very quietly. You can typically get a lot of life out of a nickel set of strings. Sound wise, they are well suited to all styles of music. Stainless strings on the other hand are relatively bright with a real emphasis in the high frequency area. They can sound very percussive and tend to bring out the sizzle sounds of your frets making contact with the string. If you are a sloppy player, stainless strings are just going make you sound really sloppy. They are not very forgiving when it comes to mis-hits. Slap players tend to gravitate toward stainless strings because of the bright percussive quality. Stainless strings are pretty abrasive on the frets, fretboard and your fingers. I don't know for sure but I would bet Les Claypool uses stainless as a main ingrediant to his sound. As for tension, I find stainless strings tend to have less tension than an equivalent nickel set. I personally love the sound of stainless. I love to hear that fret noise sizzle.

String winding types include round wound, flat wound and ground wound. round wound are your typical bass string your see set up on most stock basses at the music store. Of the three winding types this is the brightest and most percussive. I'd guess 9/10 bass players use round wounds. Flat wounds or ribbon wound strings are totally smoothe to the touch. You tend to see these string set up on stock fender frettless basses. They have a very dark sound that is a close approximation tone wise to the string used on a traditional upright bass. There is almost no fret noise produced when playing flats. I find that there is almost no harmonic content in the sound produced. Installing a set of flats you will notice that the stings have a lot of tension. Roger waters, Steve Harris and the great James Jamerson all played flats to get there tone. Ground wounds are essentially a hybrid with both flat and round qualities. I assume the name Ground refers to the fact that the rounded texture of the sting winding has been ground down to a flatter texture. These string are pretty cool. They sound darker than rounds but brighter than flats. I've used grounds on a recording where I was trying to get a classic motown sound on my bass.

The last string attribute affecting your tone is the condition of your strings. Dirty strings are going to lose brightness. Dirty strings sound dull and lack harmonics. They sound dead. Corroded strings have the same affect - get rid of them. Lastly, your strings beating against the frets can flatten out spots on your strings. These flat spots wil cause your strings begin to sound out of tune over time. Once this starts happening, it's a good time to get a new set. Simply wiping down your strings after you play will really improve the life of the strings.

How does your fretting hand affect your tone?

My left hand (a.k.a the stranger) is my fretting hand. When I first started playing I figured I had to press somewhere in the middle of the two frets for the note I wanted to play. Sometimes I would get some buzzing so I assumed that I wasn't squeezing the strings against the neck with enough force. After a few minutes my left hand would start cramping up from fatigue. My knuckles would turn white as I tried to maintain stamina over three or four bars. The calluses I was developing were getting thicker than raw hide. This approach wasn't serving me well.

What I didn't understand was that the fretboard space between the frets was not the target space for playing the notes. After getting a bit of advice from another seasoned player, I learned that the place to fret the note was immediately behind the fret itself. This seemed intimidating to me at first. Too precise for my skills.

What I discovered was that it was so much easier to play the bass this way. I found that my knuckles weren't turning white from the vulcan death grip I had on the neck previously. I discovered that I had so much more endurance than before. My tone was hugely improved since the this technique virtually eliminated mis-hits, buzzes and flubbed unsustainable notes. My bass sound became much more clean and clear. I could also play much faster since my left hand very relaxed. (Note: I am not a speed freak but I think it's important to be able to have this skill when required.)

Playing the bass just behind the fret is an important technique for getting good consistent sounds out of your bass. On a final note, using this technique makes the transition from a precision to a fretless bass very seamless. This fretting approach is exactly the same technique applied on fretless. Exactly the same technique!

Check out Marcus Miller below. Notice the left hand finger placement. It's right behind the fret. This is where the note sings.

Your plucking fingers

What do your fingers have to do with your tone?

Your fingers are the first point of contact between you and the bass. There is obviously certain genetic characteristics about your finger that you can never change, however there are certain things about your digits that are within your control.

Let's start with the plucking fingers. This is your right hand if your are a right handed player.

First and most important, the length of your finger nails play a big roll in the quality and consistency of tone you produce by striking the strings. If your fingernails protrude beyond the tips then you are going to get a pick-like tone. This may be fine if this is a sound you like. The problem is getting a consistent timbre and volume from each attack.

Ideally, you should keep your nails trimmed so they do not extend beyond the tips. The closer the nails get to the tips of your fingers - the more midrange tones you will produce. Keeping your nails very short will yield more bassy tones. You can test this by simply trimming just one nail on your plucking hand and compare the tone between the trimmed nail and the longer untrimmed nail. You can hear a difference. I personally like the sound of my nails when they have just a little length as it helps add some punchy tonal qualities to my sound.

Secondly, the angle and amount of fingertip making contact with the strings will affect the resulting sound. For example, if you pluck with just the very tips you can get a very percussive sounding attack since the tips have an effect of tapping down on the strings. You can also play very quickly as there is little friction and therefore less energy required to get the strings moving. On the other extreme, you can pluck the stings with more of your finger tip by sweeping across the string. You'll get a fatter and warmer tone using this approach. This technique requires more effort as there is more friction on the string and therefore harder to play quickly. I personally like to alternate these techniques to add variety to my bass lines. I'll use just the tips for quick pizzicato lines and more of the tip for walking type bass-lines.

Finally, where you pluck along the length of the string will dramatically effect the quality of sound. I am sure you've noticed that bass players pluck in various spots between the bridge and the neck. Sting for example tends to play very close to the bridge. Stanley Clarke does a lot of playing closer to the neck. Jaco seems to play everywhere sometimes switching positions in the middle of his phrases. So what's the deal? The closer you play to the bridge, the more midrange and harmonic overtone content you will hear. You will also notice that it takes a lot of effort to get a good volume in this position. This is because there is alot of tension on the string here. Alot of players find it easier to play fast lines in this position as the string does not have alot of movement. The closer to the neck position you play, you get less overtones and a bassier content. You will notice that the string has much less tension here. Everywhere in between is just a gradual transition between these two effects. I like the variety you can get from plucking in the various positions. I use my ears to decide what works best for a bass-line.

What's here?

Here the plan... I want to focus this open discussion on all things, in my humble opinion, effecting the tone of your bass.

A bit of background.

I picked up the bass guitar back in the early nineties when I was just finishing high school. My musical experience prior to bass guitar included some unenthusiastic participation in early high school band playing the alto sax. At that time I doubt I could even distinguish the sound of the bass in a band. I learned to read music and do some sight reading - which got me a minimal passing grade in music class. It never felt like a creative activity for me.

It's difficult for me to remember exactly what struck me about the bass. This may have something to do with the fact I was smoking doobies every night of the week and taking hallucinogens almost every Friday. I suspect this kind of abuse may have heightened certain auditory sensitivities for me, namely in lower sound frequencies. I do remember hearing the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the Uplift Mofo Party Plan album. For the first time I could hear this thing called the bass. And what an awesome sounding beast.

I bought a bass for $80 and starting making noises. It was a p-bass knockoff. It was a japenese make. The previous owner had sanded down the body and put a clear finish. He did a horrible job. You could see the orbital sander swirling marks pushing their way through the varnish. I didn't have an amp so I wired it to this cheap-assed stereo system. I kept my poor neighbours up all night just hitting the E string and just listeneing to the awesomeness of that 40Hz vibrating around my small room. I wish I still had that bass. It had the most amazing maple neck, cream covered Dimarzio pickups and some beefy clover style tuning heads.

I sold that bass and upgraded (so I thought) to a green, very modern looking samick. I think I paid like $290 dollars for it. What a piece of dogshit that was. The amp I was playing through at the time was an old 50 watt traynor sold state bass head and a 15 inch peavy cab. I was really into Primus, fishbone and hendrix and was learning completely by ear.

Time went on and I owned yet another samick - this time a 5 string. It still sounded like shit! I later bought a yamaha which was a huge improvement over the samicks. I eventually got tired of buying shitty sounding basses. I spent a whole summer working at this toxic paint shop and saved enough to buy myself an Ernie Ball Sting Ray. I was not satisfied with the sound of the bass I had. I got rid of the traynor amp and purchased a fender 200 watt solid state bass amp. Finally I was getting some decent sounds.

Jesus, I wasted alot of money on awful sounding gear. I've become somewhat ill when it comes to bass tone. I've spent the last few years really honing down and refining my sound. I hope to share some of these lessoned learned.