another Oddball Pyramid Flats Issue

[edwardofhuncote]

The 'blooms' on the branches of this strange little copper wire plant I dreamed up long ago were made of repurposed ball-ends of guitar strings. 


To the point of BeenDown's thread... those D'A Chromes I sent him that were too short... they may have been on my Custom fretless 5-string for maybe a week, and gotten 8 hours of work. I just didn't care for them. I am however, OCD to the point that the ends of them are dipped in paraffin after I clip them, so no ravelling of the silk. They are cut for a medium-scale 3+2 Alembic, if you can use them. Unfortunately didn't help Ol' 139 there. Can't win 'em all... 

[BeenDown139]

back in the day when i actually still did yard work, id use my old bass strings in the weed wacker. i think the D and G strings worked best.  gotta watch for that flying shrapnel in case of a catastrophic failure dontcha know 😵

[cozmik_cowboy]

The 'blooms' on the branches of this strange little copper wire plant I dreamed up long ago were made of repurposed ball-ends of guitar strings.   

Sweet!

Peter

[BeenDown139]

it's been a little while since i played the chrome-equipped essence.  after i changed the strings out, it took quite a while to get the neck settled in.  these strings are even higher tension than the rotosounds i had on it before.  it took almost a full turn on both truss rods to unbow the neck.  i can definitely feel the difference in my left hand, it's noticibly harder to bend notes.

but....
i tuned it to pitch after the last neck tweak, let it hang for about 3 weeks, picked it up yesterday and it was still in tune.  that never happened with the TI's. any change in humidity and the whole bass would go sharp or flat almost a whole step sometimes.
i gave it a good 60-minute workout and i have to say that the bass has never played better. the action is lower than i've ever been able to set it consistently before and  all the fretless goodies - growl, bloom, vibrato, intonation are much improved.  i liked the sound of the TI's a little better, but these sound damn good.
so maybe this particular bass just needs to have a lot of tension on the neck or it just flops around with the weather.    we'll see if everybody still likes each other by the time the annual string change comes in december.

thanks to StephenR for evaluating the set of pyramids i sent him.  apparently he was able to duplicate the floppy B string issue and it looks like the string was defective after all.

and now.....onward!

[StephenR]

Hey Tim... moments ago I sent a query to Max a Pyramid to see if he can make be a custom B-string to flesh out your set. I have them on my 78 Series I bass and with the exception of the B string they sound fantastic on this bass. The tuner shaft is quite close to the nut on my bass and it has been a consistent problem finding a B-string that fits properly. Hoping Max can make me a B string that will fit and not sound dead like yours does. I think the winding on your B is a bit too thick behind the ball end, very hard to seat the ball end properly, I suspect this is the reason it sounds so dead.

Meanwhile, great to hear that the Chromes are working for you! Play on...

[BeenDown139]

ok one more last post on this subject.  i swear.  really.  i do.  seriously.

i really like how i can just pick this bass up and play it now without having to jack with tuning it or finding out where the weird spots are on the fingerboard this time because the neck has gone wonky since the last time i played it.

my hands have been giving me a lot of grief lately, today i was working on some finger exercises and came up with this little ditty.  i still like the sound of the pyramids better, but i just love how these chromes feel.  they do put up a fight.

[rv_bass]

Sounds good, Tim!     Another option might be Labella Low Tension  Flats.  I switched to them because the tension of Pyramid strings was so high.  They sound close to Pyramid strings to me and they feel great when playing (i.e., smooth surface and not too loose or not too tight).

[jacko]

My brother's a wood turner. He gets all my old roundwounds to put different gauge grooves in his work.

Graeme

[cozmik_cowboy]

My brother's a wood turner. He gets all my old roundwounds to put different gauge grooves in his work.

Graeme

The singer/songwriter who was the first person I did sound for full-time would give his old guitar strings to a local potter for the same purpose.
Or close, anyway; I think he used the wound strings for texturing & the plains for cutting.

Peter