One of my 3 favorite basses (i.e. not the Tony Franklin) is a beautiful dark blue Carvin fretless bass.
The secret that many don’t know is that there are side dots to let you know where the “fret” positions are. I added an extra dot at the first fret to help that 3-fret jump. This means that an experienced bassist can pick one up and play on it right away. All of your patterns will fall right in line with your fingers, and it’s a matter of using your ear to get the intonation right.
I don’t do fancy stuff though; just standard bass lines. Fretless bass feels like running barefoot through a soft meadow. What an awesome feeling.
I know I could look this up, but I thought it would be good to keep this thread more active.
Do you typically use flatwounds on fretless basses?
I’ve never used flatwounds but I got a set for my Mustang. I need to widen one of the nut slots a bit so I’ll be giving them a shot fairly soon once I do the filing.
Nope. But I do since I just want the feel, not the sound. I still want “thump”
Most use roundwounds in order to get the “mwah” sound and more high end. They tend to scratch up the fretboard, so a fretless bass needs fretboard care from time to time.
Yet another reason why I break with tradition and use flatwounds on mine.
Supposedly Chris Squire changed his strings before every gig, or so he as been quoted as saying.
I think he used Rotosound roundwounds on a Rick? I must admit I’d expect a certain amount of settling in, but perhaps he worked them in a lot before the gig….
Heheh, I only change bass strings when I break one. Now that I think about it, I haven’t broken one in about five years. (nervously looks around to see if he has a spare set of flats hanging around)
Pretty Carvin!
He was a hero of mine as a kid. I filed the frets off my lawsuit era Jazz copy in emulation. My understanding is that he was terribly hard to deal with for the last few years, sabotaging things left and right. It was more mental illness than drug addiction. I’m not sure we’ll ever have tools to protect someone in that situation.
One of the things I was amazed by when I borrowed my friend’s Ric 4003 was how comfortable the strap was on a heavy bass. My friend didn’t know where it came from, but I think I tracked it down. Anyone with a heavy bass that hurts your shoulder/neck rather than your back might consider one.
My cousin “loaned” me his bass when I told him I was picking it up and getting better at it during open jams. First thing I did was string it with flatwounds. So much easier on the little fingies.
I’ve never changed the strings on my two basses, but I’ve never played flatwounds. A bit of an experiment for me. My G&L still has the strings from when I bought it used many years ago and it has been played a ton since I started playing with a “band”…still need a singer.
Maybe I should try one of these as well. I did switch to a wide padded strap which definitely helps with the herniated disk in my neck. Two hours of standing and playing is way more doable with the new strap, but I still feel it. Someday I’ll get that surgery, but I cringe at that one and want to put it off as long as possible.
My unplayed guitar is my Ibanez Roadstar. It’s a fine guitar with an amazing neck, but I just don’t reach for it frequently. Especially since I put a dual coil on my Strat. It is sentimental though – my first real guitar – so I’ll never part with it. I regret giving away my first non-real guitar – a trash guitar from Sears. I only have 4 guitars total so there’s no pressure to clean house.
I always liked Tony Franklin’s fretless sound. Seems like a great way to stand out in the crowded field of musicians. I’m surprised there weren’t more (or maybe I didn’t notice).
My college roommate had a bass guitar with swappable necks: one fretted and one fretless. It wasn’t very practical though since it was a lot of work to do. Based on how frequently you all change bass strings there wouldn’t be many opportunities to swap.
Thanks for this. It’s the motivation I needed. My finger picking is pretty lazy and it’s long been on my list of things to improve. Lately I’ve been going back to basics and working on things I skipped or took short-cuts on.
It might just be me, but I’ve found that I’ll tend to ignore practicing techniques that are very weak because they are so far ‘behind’. I have to consciously force myself to practice them. The irony though is that the weakest areas quickly show the greatest improvement. This is much more satisfying than trying to eek out a slight improvement elsewhere.
Hehe, I think all of the strings I’ve broken have been roundwounds. Most basses come strung with roundwounds and I’m a cheapskate, so I ChapStik them up to deaden them and make them smell of vanilla. Then I just play the rounds until I break one. After that, flats go on.
I do have four basses that still have their original rounds after my owning them for more than ten years - Thunderbird, EB-3, Mustang, and Danelectro Longhorn. All of them served as my primary bass for at least a year without breaking a string. All of the strings I’ve broken were when I was playing with a pick. I’ve been playing with my fingers a lot more lately, so maybe all of my broken bass strings are in the past.
If you’re having trouble finding a singer, have you thought about recruiting a lead instrumentalist?
I like this one better than any padded strap I’ve tried. I think it’s because all of the padded straps I’ve tried tended to slip, while the texture and give of this strap keep it in place.
Yeah, that’s the only way to get any good at it: do it often.
I don’t even know how I got started finger picking. I originally started to use thumb picks on bass because I was dropping picks at around the 40 minute mark in a set due to an old thumb injury. So, I think I started finger picking just because I had the thumb picks laying around. I wrote a few songs that used it, and since I’ve never had a band where finger picking was appropriate I kept playing them myself instead of teaching them to a guitarist (still don’t have a “final” recorded version of any of them). After I did play one of them in front of one of my guitarists, he later made the remark “I can finger pick, but I’m not really good at it like scabpicker is.” To be honest, I was stunned. That was the first time he’d complimented my musicianship within earshot of me. I didn’t really realize I could finger pick well before then.
All of that said, I still technically do it “wrong” from some perspectives. I love the thumb pick, can’t stand the finger picks. My fingers have to touch the strings, or I’m sloppy. So I do it with a thumb pick and three bare fingers.
Matter of preference, but for me there is nothing like the ‘zing’ of new roundwounds on a bass in the right context. Depends on the song, of course. Sometimes on the other hand you want the bass to melt supportively in to the background.
As for the age-old pick vs fingers fight: I think it’s silly. Both have their place, depending on the song. I probably play about 50/50 these days.
My love of fuzz and distortion is what led me to to flats. The zing of new roundwounds has a tendency to be kind of harsh through those, “dead” rounds don’t do that. Even when I was still playing rounds, I’d put some sort of wax on them to tone them down when new. Then I bought a used Precision that had flats on it and liked them. So when I broke a string on the Jazz, it got flats too. As far as I can tell, flats always maintain the same brightness. I’m not sure if they age at all.
Hehe, yeah. Pick vs fingers on bass is a silly argument. I played bass mostly through my teens, and played with my fingers. Then I was a guitarist in a few bands in my twenties and naturally played with a pick. So when I went back to playing bass in bands in my thirties, my pointer and index finger muscles just weren’t up to it. So I played bass with a pick for a few years. But I’m lazy, and often wouldn’t bother finding a pick when I picked up the bass. That slowly got my finger muscles back to where they could play a full show again. These days I can use either to get whatever tone I want.
That’s definitely not me. My ears want Motown Thump, so I do everything I can to get there. With that said, fresh roundwounds do have a great sound and presence.
And as much as I have tried using a pick on my bass, it feels like I’m trying to run in army boots. I used to play a lot of jazz guitar with those little stubby jazz picks, so it should be simple to transfer that old skill to the bass…nope! As soon as I think “Wow, this lets me play pretty fast!” I toss the pick aside and instantly get back to that “barefoot in the meadow” feel, and then I see that I play faster with my fingers than I can with a pick.
Whenever I hear fast tight bass runs (that aren’t YouTube show-offs, but standard runs in music where the bass is in the background) I recognize the power of a pick. But it’s not for me.
Lead guitarist is working on singing. And, my wife is also working on it. I think she’ll win this. He has a hard time singing while any lead playing is going on. We cover bands with two guitarists (Strokes, Arctic Monkeys, At the Drive in, Cage the Elephant, and others) and our two guitarists trade lead, but the guy trying to sing is really our lead. At today’s practice, he broke his high E and switched his solo on that song to use the B on the fly. Blows my mind.
So, I’d rather him keep being his awesome self on guitar. Leave the singing to someone else.
Either way, I’m having so much fun playing music with others after a long hiatus. Always the highlight of my week. I just need my wife to say she is ready to show up and sing a couple of songs. I know she can do it.
