Feeling kind of flat

Written by Dermot on Friday, 21 August 2009

Having reached the age at which I’m drifting - perilously but happily – towards jazz appreciation (yep, it’ll happen to you too) I decided to try out some flat wound strings for the first time ever. For those of you who are unaware, flatwound strings are used by some jazz guitar players. Instead of having the slightly coarse feeling of ‘regular’ roundwounds, they have a shallower relief, which basically means that you don’t feel the grooves and the whole experience feels ‘slinkier’.

Using my most appropriate guitar (An Eastman 805 archtop, since you ask), I strung up, tuned up and got comping….
First of all to say it feels odd. You can run your fingers up and down the string without getting the ‘crackle’ or resistance and friction. It certainly sounds smoother, something which I expect you’d notice a whole lot more while recording solo guitar with a proper mic. The thing is, I think I miss the ‘edge’ of roughness. I’m not a particularly smooth guitar player, so maybe it’s something that actually suits me, though you could think of it as an imperfection.

Double basses come with flatwound strings,  which makes a lot more sense to me, as you’re probably going to be sliding up and down the neck a lot more, especially as you’re working without frets.

If you’ve got an archtop, I’d say ‘give it a go’ out of curiosity, but I expect – when they’re due for replacement – I’ll go back go good old phosphor bronze roundwounds.