tighten string windings to maintain brilliance?

[cloclo]

in this webpage (about acoustic guitars) it says that tightening your string windings (by giving your strings a few extra turns) improves brilliance on bass strings.

 

i know this was written for acoustic guitars, but the principle remains. did anyone ever try this?? and was there a noticeable difference?

[Basskickerboy]

OK, I know I'm stupid and young, and probably missing something, but if you tighten your strings, won't your guitar go out of tune? I don't exactly understand what the webpage was talking about.

[zeronyne]

The implication is that if the string is more tightly wound around the post, there is more contact with the bass, hence more "brilliance".

 

Basskicker, the instructions say to wind the string almost to pitch, then unwind it again enough to pull the ball end out of the bridge, wind it a few extra times while pulling (I assume) to tighten up the post, and then reroute it to the bridge.

 

I doubt this applies to bass guitar, but it doesn't hurt to make sure that one winds the string on correctly.

[cloclo]

actually, i thought it was about twisting the string around the centre of its own core, so you get more windings. these windings got stretched because of the tension when you put them on your bass. you stretch by tuning, loosen them so you can add some twists at the ball-end by the bridge (which the guy in the picture on that website is doing), hold the string while you tune (so they don't unwind again) and voila! instead of typing i should just test it, but my strings are quite new so i don't think i would notice. just my curiosity

 

http://www.jo-co.be/langshier/twist.gif

[jeremy c]

Excuse me, but this idea sounds very strange to me.

 

First of all, I always avoid twisting the string at all when re-stringing. That's why you need to keep turning the peg. You can't take the shortcut of putting the end of the string in the hole in the tuner and then winding it around a few times to save yourself some turns of the tuning peg.

 

The windings are supposed to be attached to the core of the string, they aren't sliding around on it. If you detach the windings from the core, you are going to greatly decrease the life of the string.

 

That's also why you shouldn't yank on the string to stretch it. Yes, you'll stretch it and at the same time you just made the string start to go dead quicker.

[BenLoy]

It seems to me that discussions like these always seem superfluous to making music. The stringmakers have done the work for us.

 

String your bass up and practice.

[Fred TBP]

I always thought a few extra windings on the tuner would improve string tension in relation to the varying tension exerted by the neck, much the way that bridge cables are drawn through pulleys to compensate for the shifting of stress on the roadway.

 

Or maybe I'm drinking too much hot cocoa this winter.

[73 P Bass]

I used to have a bass with locking tuners (sperzel's); stick the string in the hole, lock it, cut the end, tune it up. They worked great!

I've been playing Fender's for a while now though, so the only string I cut is the E, so it doesn't start wrapping back up on itself (looks bad, no benefit).

I wind the string onto the post, with the bottom wrap being flat against the bottom of the post, to create the best break angle at the nut.

I'll give them a couple of yanks, and then they're all set, and will stay in tune.

I've never broke a string.

[bruiser_dup2]

Originally posted by Fred the bass player:

I always thought a few extra windings on the tuner would improve string tension in relation to the varying tension exerted by the neck, much the way that bridge cables are drawn through pulleys to compensate for the shifting of stress on the roadway.

 

Or maybe I'm drinking too much hot cocoa this winter.

I'm going with the cocoa theory.

 

The tension in your strings is determined by their mass and the pitch to which you tune them. What's wrapped around the post or behind the bridge saddle's got nothing to do with it. Yes, the tension changes slightly when you fret a note, but that's why we set the intonation.

 

Or so the physic professors would have us believe.

 

Bruiser