Roundwound Strings on Your Bass Guitar?

While it’s true that roundwound strings give you a livelier tone (think Chris Squire or the late John Entwhistle), the sad truth is that they do tend to chew up frets at a much faster rate than flatwound strings. Still, anyone who has ever tried to do slaps, pops, or taps on a bass guitar with flatwound strings knows it really doesn’t work. Fortunately, we have a nice compromise available today in the groundwound string. This is a roundwound string that’s been, well, ground down a bit, so that there’s a slightly smoother feel to them. In general, they’ll give you brighter tones than flatwounds but without the concerns generally associated with using roundwounds.