Telecaster and Flatwound Strings

[daveg]

I am loving the sounds from my newly acquired Fender Hotshot Tele but I am itching to try some Flatwound strings just to see if that works.

I have D'Addario 11's on there at the moment.

Can anyone comment from their experiences with Flatwounds on a Tele??

DG

[David B]

I've no personal experience, but here are a couple of interesting videos on the subject.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

I’ve had a Tele since 1969. The first one had stock DC pickups. I put Duncan Hot Rails in the second one and Lace Alumitones in the third. I used (and still use) flats on all of my guitars.

I started with Gibson flats, then Guild EA610s for several years, then Chromes, and now TIs. IME, all are great on Teles. I love the feel, and they’ll do anything from jazz to fusion tones very well. If you’re playing surf, rockabilly, etc, you’ll probably like RW better because flats don’t twang well.

Just my opinion - YMMV.

[AllanAllen]

I had flats on mine for a few years. 12s. I liked them, but now I'm back to rounds, rounds cheaper and I can get a mellow sound with the tone knobs.

[Strat-itis]

My experience was to just try them to see which works better for you. Round and flat have very different uses that don't really overlap. Ime, it's good to have guitars with both, that way you don't need to choose, you can go to a flat guitar if you have the itch or vice versa. It doesn't matter what type of guitar it is as long as it's set up for jazz, flats don't prefer hollow body over solid body or anything.

[Average Joe]

I go back and forth on whether I like flats or not, so take it for what it's worth. Both on my current strat and on the tele I used to have it made a difference, but not that much of a difference. Not when I stayed with the same gauge. Flats were a wee bit mellower and had a slightly shorter sustain to them but we're talking nuance here, not night and day.

Try it, it's easy and cheap and reversible. Have a go and see how you like it.

[Cunamara]

I've tried many flats over the years on Teles and other guitars. They're different from roundwounds so that is interesting for a while, but I always got back. Of course YMMV!

[213Cobra]

I have a few Telecasters and T-Types not made by Fender. If I only had one, I wouldn't use flatwounds on it exclusively -- maybe for a string change now and then. But I don't just have one and like having at least one strung with flats for that specific voice. Currently, that's a Fender MIJ Shell Pink '60s Tele stuffed with Seymour Duncan Zephyr silver-coil pickups. Splendid. Years ago I bought a stash of Gibson stainless steel flatwound 12s. Still have a few packs and that's what's on this MIJ Tele now. The flats aren't dull in a frequency response sense but they shave off some of the Telecaster spank and give it a more liquid sound. And I love the feel of substantial 12s under my fingers instead of the common Tele gauges of 9s and 10s, but then at root, I'm an acoustic player who happens to play through pickups and amps sometimes.

Phil