Did the Bass VI originally ship with flatwounds?

[N0_Camping4U]

I feel like I've read that the Bass VI, or Fender VI as it was originally, shipped with flatwounds. Is that true?

[JVG]

Good question. I investigated this a while ago when i was putting together a VI replica.

I couldn’t find much hard evidence that they always shipped with flatwounds, however i found some Fender product catalogues from 1966 and 1968 which list the only VI string available as Fender “Mastersound Flatwound Strings”, Set No. 700 (gauges 26-35-44-55-75-95).

You can also hear, on early recordings by artists known to use a VI (eg Jack Bruce, Jet Harris) that they have the distinctive flatwound tone. It’s most likely (though not certain) that they bought the guitars this way..

So my thinking is that most (possibly all) VI models were factory-fitted with flatwound strings, especially the early ones. However, as roundwound strings became dominant in the late 1960s (and flatwounds became a bit ‘uncool’), it’s possible that the later ones were fitted with roundwounds. (This is just my theory - not fact).

If someone else has strong evidence around this, I’d be interested. When scouring the internet, i found a lot of people expressing opinions as fact, but not much supporting evidence.

Cheers!
J.

[eggwheat]

Yes, I've had two Bass VI's with the original flat wound strings still on them.

[Embenny]

On top of eggwheat's evidence, I'll add that the year Bass VIs were released (1961), there literally weren't any roundwound strings at all. Rotosound invented them, and released them (the first roundwounds, not the first roundwound Bass VI set) in 1962. Roundwounds were a new and niche thing until deeper into the 60's, they barely used them on guitars and 4-string basses, let alone Bass VIs.

The factory strings were always flatwounds.

[adamrobertt]

On top of eggwheat's evidence, I'll add that the year Bass VIs were released (1961), there literally weren't any roundwound strings at all. Rotosound invented them, and released them (the first roundwounds, not the first roundwound Bass VI set) in 1962. Roundwounds were a new and niche thing until deeper into the 60's, they barely used them on guitars and 4-string basses, let alone Bass VIs.

The factory strings were always flatwounds.

Crazy to think that every 50s strat and Les Paul had flats on them originally.

[Embenny]

On top of eggwheat's evidence, I'll add that the year Bass VIs were released (1961), there literally weren't any roundwound strings at all. Rotosound invented them, and released them (the first roundwounds, not the first roundwound Bass VI set) in 1962. Roundwounds were a new and niche thing until deeper into the 60's, they barely used them on guitars and 4-string basses, let alone Bass VIs.

The factory strings were always flatwounds.

Crazy to think that every 50s strat and Les Paul had flats on them originally.

Not just 50's, all of the pre-CBS instruments, essentially. Between you and me, I think that's why 50's tone has been fetishized for so long. For 30-40 years, players have been sold magic pickups with "aged" magnets to sound like "old" guitars, when the famously warm tones were all recorded on guitars with brand new magnets and flat wound strings. Plus, between the mics they used, the tape they laid tracks down onto, and the vinyl that was cut from it, they essentially had several low-pass filters applied from there.

And yet, any new guitar you put flats on still makes you think "wow - that's a lot warmer."

Fender bridge pickups sound *very* different with flatwound .013's on them, which is how they were developed and tested (or was it .014s? I forget offhand). Funny how people put roundwound .009's on a strat and complain that the bridge pickup sounds too thin.

[adamrobertt]

On top of eggwheat's evidence, I'll add that the year Bass VIs were released (1961), there literally weren't any roundwound strings at all. Rotosound invented them, and released them (the first roundwounds, not the first roundwound Bass VI set) in 1962. Roundwounds were a new and niche thing until deeper into the 60's, they barely used them on guitars and 4-string basses, let alone Bass VIs.

The factory strings were always flatwounds.

Crazy to think that every 50s strat and Les Paul had flats on them originally.

Not just 50's, all of the pre-CBS instruments, essentially. Between you and me, I think that's why 50's tone has been fetishized for so long. For 30-40 years, players have been sold magic pickups with "aged" magnets to sound like "old" guitars, when the famously warm tones were all recorded on guitars with brand new magnets and flat wound strings. Plus, between the mics they used, the tape they laid tracks down onto, and the vinyl that was cut from it, they essentially had several low-pass filters applied from there.

And yet, any new guitar you put flats on still makes you think "wow - that's a lot warmer."

Fender bridge pickups sound *very* different with flatwound .013's on them, which is how they were developed and tested (or was it .014s? I forget offhand). Funny how people put roundwound .009's on a strat and complain that the bridge pickup sounds too thin.

Yeah, I definitely think you're on to something there. And obviously I've known this for a long time but it's still weird to think about.

[timtam]

Original manual suggests yes they did ...
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... I_1962.pdf

[Sweetfinger]

On top of eggwheat's evidence, I'll add that the year Bass VIs were released (1961), there literally weren't any roundwound strings at all. Rotosound invented them, ...

Not true. Roundwound strings had been around for a hundred years or longer. What do you think pianos used? Mandolins? Zithers?
Labella claims to have invented the flatwound steel guitar string in the late 1940s. Upright bass players used gut and steel, but when Rickenbacker, Vega, and Tutmarc were experimenting with the first electric bass designs in the late 1930s, what do you suppose those strings were?
Rotosound simply was the first commercial maker to make a sets of roundwound steel strings specifically for the "new" electric bass.
For the most part, the idea of the electric bass from inception was to provide the sound of an acoustic bass, but louder, so flatwound strings were the obvious choice and steel would be required to work with magnetic pickups. Acoustic/upright players would have been using gut strings or flatwound steel, because roundwounds would have been a big pain, literally, to use on a fretless instrument. That's why there weren't commercial roundwound bass sets.
Guitar strings were readily available in roundwound and semi-flat of various types since the early part of the century.
When you're looking for the "lost" tones of yesteryear, the part that I'm not sure you could truly find is a string like some of the common semi-flats that seemed to disappear in the 1970s as "slinky" nickel alloy roundwounds became the string of choice.
The old formula semi-flats I've seen are not a roundwound string that has been compressed after winding, or ground flatter after winding. These had the outer wrap compressed and flattened before it was wound on the core. How do I know? By looking at how they were made. You can see the wrap on these vintage strings is flat up over the twisted end.

You can't grind that. It was flattened before it was wound. These strings have a lot of mass, thicker cores than you typically find today, and because of the wider surface area on the wraps, they are a lot stiffer than a comparable size roundwound. They have a tone that nothing today really gets and to my knowledge, no string company makes a product with this type of construction. Ground wound strings are closest.

[Embenny]

Not true. Roundwound strings had been around for a hundred years or longer. What do you think pianos used? Mandolins? Zithers?

I think they weren't using magnetic steel cores. Sorry if I spoke too generally when I said, "rotosound invented them" - I meant "invented roundwound steel core electric bass strings", which they did. Yes, there were many forms of roundwound string before that, but we were talking about electric guitar and bass with magnetic pickups requiring ferromagnetic strings and I meant for my statement to be interpreted in that context.

[Mechanical Birds]

Yeah it wasn’t just the VI like all electric guitars at that point used flatwounds

[JVG]

There seems to be a lot of internet ‘wisdom’ about electric guitar strings, but substantiating many claims seems to be more troublesome.

There is an interesting and well-researched article about guitar strings (albeit with an acoustic focus) here:
https://tinderwetstudios.com/guitar-str ... -pre-wwii/

This backs up Sweetfinger’s suggestion that various kinds of ‘polished’ halfround or rollerwound guitar strings were used well before the advent of flatwounds. It also discusses the widespread use of Monel for string wrap before pure nickel became dominant on electrics in the 50s.

A bit of a tangent to the current thread topic, but worthy of note.

Cheers
J.

[Sweetfinger]

Not true. Roundwound strings had been around for a hundred years or longer. What do you think pianos used? Mandolins? Zithers?

I think they weren't using magnetic steel cores. Sorry if I spoke too generally when I said, "rotosound invented them" - I meant "invented roundwound steel core electric bass strings", which they did. Yes, there were many forms of roundwound string before that, but we were talking about electric guitar and bass with magnetic pickups requiring ferromagnetic strings and I meant for my statement to be interpreted in that context.

Old piano, mandolin, zither, and guitar strings were using ferro-steel core wire, or "mandolin wire" or "music wire" as it was known in the wire industry. There simply isn't another material that would have worked. Steel core wire has been around for centuries.
The upright bass was almost always a fretless instrument, so strings used on them would have been flat, be they gut, nylon, or steel. It follows that when Leo Fender made his fretted electric bass, he simply used a flatwound steel core string because that would have been the available, familiar feeling, and mechanically usable string. Rotosound was simply the first generally acknowledged aftermarket string supplier to make and market a gauged roundwound steel string set specifically for a fretted electric bass, an instrument that was less than ten years old in the larger marketplace at the time. Those old Dyer and Gibson harp guitars, mandolins, etc., all had steel core roundwound strings on them before the founders of Rotosound were even born.
I have read that Danelectro shipped its six string basses with roundwound strings, which would predate Rotosound's "invention". The fact that Dano basses and baritones use guitar string sized ball ends seems to indicate they were made more of a guitar string in mind. It would be interesting to see if there's any literature on the Dano factory sets available for those.

I'll comment on that article linked by JVG: I've read that at some point in the past. I think the author sort of confuses or conflates the "silvered steel" term a bit, though in the string biz, just as now, well into the past they were fairly free with regards to terminology especially in marketing. I see vestiges of the past in the current products and you can draw a bit on those to infer what things used to be like. Modern classical sets have "silver wound" basses, which are a nylon core with a soft plated allow wrap. That type of construction is descended from a gut string with similar wrap, and one can infer that the same type of wrap may have been used on steel core strings.
Another sign of the past is the nomenclature for "light" "medium" "extra-light" string sets.
Have you asked yourself why there are "light" electric sets and "light" acoustic sets, but they are very different in gauge? The answer is that they all used to be the acoustic sizes. In 1955, a set of electric "light" guitar strings was something like .012" to .054". I think you can thank Ernie Ball for re-sizing electric strings, but there are still old school Ernie Ball sets for electric guitar gauged and labeled like acoustic strings, set #2206, for example.
There were also other metal alloys in use that have fallen by the wayside, or discontinued. Some, like Monel, have been rediscovered. The "Hot Club" Django jazzers use copper alloy round wound steel core strings with loop ends, because that's the period correct string for that music from the late 30s and 40s.
This talk of strings has reminded me that I've been meaning to hit up a certain OEM manufacturer about those vintage string formulas.

[StevenO]

Isn't there a story about John Entwistle wanting to record the bass solo of My Generation on a Danelectro because he liked the round wound sound, but kept breaking strings. He had to buy an entire new Danelectro bass every time he broke a string because replacement round wound bass strings were impossible to find. He inevitably wound (no pun intended) up recording the solo with a flat wound-strung Jazz Bass.

Might be mistaken, but I think that's what happened.

[Larry Mal]

I didn't actually know that about guitar strings. I always assumed that they were roundwound the whole time.

I knew that bass strings were originally flatwound, but I never knew that guitar strings were.

Weird. I was talking about period instruments like the theorbo, and I could literally get an old archtop guitar and put on flatwounds and have one myself.