La Bella Deep Talkin' Bass Gold Flats Electric Bass Strings - 6-string Reviews

I purchased a new 6 string bass and didn't like the strings that came on it. I purchased a set of La Bella Gold Flats and I'm a very happy camper! They feel like butter and sound fantastic! What more can I say, it's all good!

These strings are unmatchable!
Usually one would get a pack of stainless steel flat-wounds and realize that they sound dull like a three month old pair of jazzy round-wounds!

This is not the case with the La Bella Deep Talkin' 128.'s
La Bella's Deep Talkin' Gold Strings all starts with the mirror-like reflective aura of the 24k gold flat ribbon-winding providing a bright controlled brassy character. The luxurious silk texture is smooth to the touch while staying very engaging.

The world class stainless steel core keeps string tension peerless while overall action stays low and even with a tapered 128. B string

The exceptional tonal bandwidth can be shaped with ease starting with a silky midrange punch ending in piano-like over tones

Ideal fretted and fret less instruments.

Great strings, comfortable to play with a deep smooth sound - lots of fundamental, but very good definition and clarity at the same time. They match my 50-yr old P-Bass perfectly.

I purchased these for a 6 string fretless and the options for flatwounds were somewhat limited. Tape wound would have been too mellow for what I was going for. I"m really happy with the La Bellas and I"m trying some of their strings on other instruments I own.

The single wrap on the .128 near the ferrule really helps the sustain. The wraps are also quite narrow making these more flexible than the DR Legends I have on one of my fretted 4 strings. The full wrap ends just past the nut on my long scale 6 so no chance of this working on a multi-scale bass, unfortunately. These would be just about perfect if they offered them in more configurations. They are clearly hand wound so it might be as easy as just calling them up.

The tone of these strings made me immidiately think of Les Claypool"s fretless 6. Which is good because I"m trying to learn Jerry Was A Race Car Driver and having similar tone makes it easier to tell when your intonation is off from the recording.

Plus the gold color looks cool.

The strings feel great, but two of the strings (B & E) are somewhat short. Fortunately, my Bass has a Zero Fret and those two strings do touch. Hopefully, they'll stretch over time.

After all the glowing reviews about these strings I decided to try a set on my Ibanez six-string fret-less bass. I admit right from the start that I have never been a lover of the sound or feel of flatwound strings but wanted to find a string that sounded somewhere between a roundwound and a flatwound but still protected the fretboard of my bass. I put these strings on and even though they sounded better than most flats (better mid-range and better feel) they were still very very stiff and just didn't deliver the sound I was looking for. If you like flats and are looking for a nicely mid-centered string you will probably love these. For my taste the La Bella Black Tapewounds turned out to be a far better sounding alternative for less money.

First off, a quick background of my playing. I am an upright bass player turned bass guitarist with 20+ years of playing experience on bass. Until now, I have always used roundwound strings on my bass guitar. At any given show, I may be using my bass guitar to play classic and modern rock, blues, jazz, classic Motown, pop, and/or jazz.

I have been wanting to try flatwound strings for a while on my bass guitar (a 6-string Warwick Corvette Standard). Based on online research/reviews and talking with some other bass playing friends, I decided to give these LaBella's a shot. After a couple months of use, here are my pros and cons with using them:

Pros
-They look absolutely gorgeous on my Warwick and match up beautifully with the brass frets.
-Super-smooth feel under the fingers. It feels a lot like I'm playing my upright bass.
-Good thump on initial attack when playing by myself.
-The high C string has a good, thick sound compared to the thin sound of the roundwound strings I had on before these La Bellas.

Cons
-No matter how much I adjusted the EQ on my instrument, bass amp, or band PA system, I could not get these strings to cut through the mix when playing with a band. My bass always felt muddy when playing with others. My band mates and sound engineers also noticed this negative change in the sound of my bass.
-I could not get these strings to effectively trigger my MXR Bass Envelope Filter, no matter my tweaking of settings on both the bass and the filter.

If I had a second bass guitar on which I could dedicate to a flatwound sound, I would keep experimenting with these strings. However, they didn't cut it for me based on the music I play the most with my bands.