String Balance with Flatwounds

[JazzboxJohn]

I'm using some stainless steel flatwounds right now, and I'm almost in love. But I hate the low E. It just sounds hollow. Like nothing but fundamental.

I've experimented a LOT with pickup height, angle, and polepiece heights. I'm coming to a realization. Stainless steel is not magnetic. The pickup only reads the core wire. I think this is partially the source of my frustration.

Pure nickle is magnetic (though not as much as steel). It has me wondering if that property will make nickle sound less hollow.

What is everyone's experience setting up a guitar for flatwounds? Do you raise the pickup on the bass side moreso than on roundwounds?

[Cunamara]

There are different alloys that are "stainless" steel. What "stainless" means in this context is that it doesn't easily rust. Some stainless steels are magnetic, some are not. I would imagine that the alloys being used for a guitar strings would probably be magnetic.

Pyramid and Thomastik-Infeld make nickel wrapped flatwounds and it would be an easy experiment to give them a try. Personally I preferred the Pyramid ones to the TIs, but most people on the forum that use the TIs *really* like them.

You can also mix strings. If I recall correctly, the Gibson Johnny Smith strings had a flatwound E string and roundwound for the rest, or maybe more likely the other way around. That was because he used a drop D tuning. In my playing, I almost never get string noise occurring from the low string, it's usually from my fingers dragging on the D or G string.

[burchyk]

That's why I don't get along with the flatwounds. Dialing darker tone is hard for me: either wound strings end up dull or plain ones too bright.

[citizenk74]

I'm using some stainless steel flatwounds right now, and I'm almost in love. But I hate the low E. It just sounds hollow. Like nothing but fundamental.

I've experimented a LOT with pickup height, angle, and polepiece heights. I'm coming to a realization. Stainless steel is not magnetic. The pickup only reads the core wire. I think this is partially the source of my frustration.

Pure nickle is magnetic (though not as much as steel). It has me wondering if that property will make nickle sound less hollow.

What is everyone's experience setting up a guitar for flatwounds? Do you raise the pickup on the bass side moreso than on roundwounds?

[hotpepper01]

Most of my archtops have the EAD flatwound strings from a DÁddario set. For the upper 3 strings I use plain Elixir single strings.
Most 12 14 18 in combination with 30 40 50 from the set. Tweaking is with the [ickup height and the pole pieces. But, it depends on the guitar. My DA Newyorker has TI GB 14s, my Sumi S5 has bronze wounds. IMHO there is no "allways good to go to" solution. It is a try and error process until you hear what you like on every particular guitar. And yes, that requires a bit of an effort,

[Oscar67]

That's why I don't get along with the flatwounds. Dialing darker tone is hard for me: either wound strings end up dull or plain ones too bright.

Agreed. Same here. Love the sound of the flats with tone up. Love the sound of the plains with tone down. Using rounds makes it a lot easier. Anecdote: I’ve been in touch with Collings about my CL Jazz and was surprised to learn they set up and ship these things with D’Addario roundwound 12s. So I tried rounds on it instead of flats and the guitar really came alive plugged in. Awesome. Unplugged, the guitar sounded better with flats,

[RJVB]

The TI Plectrums have a flat-wound G and about my only real 2 gripes with those strings is that flat winding wire on the G. It makes the string sound just a bit duller, which seems a strange thing to pursue. Going from strings 6, 5, 4 to 2 there is a progressive increase in brightness (with an inevitable jump going to the 2nd string), so why would you let string 3 be duller so as to increase that jump even more? The winding also wears almost as fast as the one on a silver-plated copper classical D string (which has roughly the same gauge).