When it comes to finding a fresh set of strings for your bass guitar, you’ve got options, and lots of them, which can make it hard to know exactly what to go for. In this guide to the best bass strings available today we’re going to help you zero in on the right set or sets for you.
As bassists, we often have to invest a bit more in a new set of strings compared to our guitar-playing counterparts, so selecting the right bass strings for your needs becomes increasingly important, ensuring you make the most of your time and money.
There are bass strings for all occasions, for all playing styles and types of bass. What is right for you and your instrument is a matter of taste, and a question of what you need from your strings.
Across the board, we all want value and price should always be a consideration. But when it comes to materials and construction, the bass strings you choose – not to mention the gauge, or thickness, of your strings – will have a huge impact on your tone and your playing experience.
Brands like Ernie Ball, Rotosound and D’Addario have been supplying the stringed corner of the rhythm section for years and are names you can trust. However, we’ll hopefully introduce some lesser-known brands that may suit your playing style and sound, too.
Jonathan Horsley has been writing about guitars and bass since 2005, playing them since 1990, and regularly contributes to publications including Guitar World, MusicRadar and Total Guitar. For this guide Jonathan put a range of bass string sets through their paces.
Best bass strings: Product guide & reviews
There are lots of different brands out there, many with similar marketing tactics offering you the best sound, longest life etc, but we’ve hand-selected what we reckon are the best bass strings on offer right now. It doesn’t matter if you’re a beginner looking to restring for the first time, or a seasoned pro with a range of basses all needing some TLC - there’s something for every player here.
Material: Nickel-plated steel wrap, high-carbon steel core
Winding: Roundwound
Tone: Well balanced
+ Performance for the price
+ Balanced brightness and warmth
+ Plenty of options
- Neither super-bright or super-dark
The NYXL strings’s USP is the high-carbon steel from which they take their name. D’Addario cook this stuff up at their New York factory and fashion it into a super-tough hexagonal core before applying a roundwound nickel wrap. These are the second brightest strings D’Addario produce, and yet they are well-balanced, with a musical warmth and harmonic richness.
They’ll handle all kinds of styles, with a bass and treble response that’ll suit contemporary slap and percussive styles, but enough midrange to ingratiate them to those seeking more old-school flavors of thunder.
D’Addario offers the NYXL sets in a wide variety of gauges, and various hybrid gauges in between that offer a light top, heavy medium configurations. There are five- and six-string sets available, too.
Material: Stainless steel
Winding: Flatwound
Tone: Rounded and warm (with a bit of ageing)
+ Classic vintage tones
+ Nice feel
+ Get better as they get older (up to a point)
- You need the right set for your bridge
La Bella’s Deep Talkin’ flatwounds have that classic flatwound feel – easy on the finger, easy on your frets, easy on your fretboard. And there’s a lovely roundedness to their tone profile that allows those E and A strings to bloom nicely.
A little experimentation with your technique and EQ, juicing the bass, a little string deadening, and you might find yourself spirited away to Studio A, tracking with Marvin and co.
But seriously, they feel so good for fingerstyle, and make a very fretboard-friendly option for fretless players. Just make sure you get the right set for your bass; La Bella sells through-body and through-bridge sets. The “FS-TB” sets are for through-body basses.
Material: Nickel-plated steel
Winding: Roundwound
Tone: Bright and punchy
+ Value is hard to beat
+ Tone profile makes them a good all-rounder
+ If they’re good enough for Geddy…
- Not the longest lasting
Launched in 1962 and used by the likes of Geddy Lee, Roger Waters, Duff McKagan, John Entwistle and… well, you get the idea, the quality of Swing Bass 66 sets is not to be sniffed at.
How these British classics are put together is very much a trade secret. There are no line drawings of the process, no pulling back of the curtain, but you’ll know a well-made nickel-plated steel string when you play it. The balance will be there, with deep lows, detailed highs, and there should be a little warmth too.
However, at 20 bucks or less, they offer excellent value, and come in a variety of gauges, with plenty of options for short and long scale basses. Five and six string basses are also catered for.
Material: Nickel-plated steel wrap, steel core
Winding: Roundwound
Tone: Modern, bright and clear
+ Big value for money
+ You’ll find them everywhere
+ Wide variety of gauges
+ Bright, articulate tones
- Not for vintage fans
The ubiquitous Slinkys are never a bad idea, and with a quality steel core and nickel-plated roundwound wrap, they deliver a bright, effervescent tone that makes them a no-brainer for contemporary styles.
Rock bassists would love them, as would the metal heads, and with that amount of articulation and treble, the Slinkys work well for bouncy slap ’n’ pop basslines.
They also represent quite excellent value, are available in a wide variety of gauges, and are available everywhere. Sure, if you have aspirations of being the next James Jamerson, these might be a little on the bright side, but otherwise you cannot go wrong.
Material: Bright stainless steel
Winding: Roundwound
Tone: Bright and punchy
+ Lovely brightness
+ Good feel under the fingers
+ Consistent tonally across all strings
- Not the best option for ‘70s bass heads
The Hi-Beams have got a very agreeable feel, good and malleable, and that’s in no small part down to their round steel core. The brightness from that stainless-steel wrap makes them one of the best options for percussive bass styles.
Disciples of Mark King would do well to seek out the lightest set they can, boost their bass and treble accordingly, and press that thumb into service. Marcus Miller is a big fan.
DR Strings engineers these tension using its Tite Fit/Compression-Winding tech, so there is a lot more mass of metal than the finished string – so what starts out as a .108 gauge E string ends up as .105 once when it’s ready. Very clever.
Material: Black nylon-coated steel
Winding: Tapewound
Tone: Warm vintage with depth
+ Unbeatable for vintage bass sounds
+ Kind to frets, fingerboards and fingers
+ They’re coated and will last for ages
- You dislike anything that pre-dates the color TV
These tapewound strings are totally old-school, and if you are looking for that mellow, bass-heavy thunk there is nothing better. Tapewounds always feel kind to the fingers and they are ideal for fretless players who don’t want to chew the rosewood to kindling.
We would co-sign Rotosound’s description of the Tru Bass 88’s tone profile as deep and warm, but maybe it’s best to direct you to recordings such as Abbey Road and Transformer – two recordings form the pop-cultural pantheon to feature them.
Depending on your setup, you can chase upright bass tones with these, and that, in this digitized age, is a beautiful prospect.
Material: Iron/cobalt alloy-wrapped steel
Winding: Roundwound
Tone: Crisp highs, prominent low end, scooped-mids
+ Long-lasting freshness
+ Clarity across the frequency spectrum
+ Versatile, but especially good for bolder players
- They lack vintage warmth
And now for something completely different, the Power Slinky Cobalts. Well, not completely different, but with the iron/cobalt alloy wrap offering more magnetism for your pickups to react to, the Cobalts are engineered to give you more output.
Tone-wise, this serves up a menu of deeper lows and brighter highs, and a midrange that has a little more discipline. And, of course, with a soupçon more output, they’ll really help you cement the low end in the mix.
This should appeal to a wide range of players, especially those playing modern styles. Rock and metal players should like these. But then, that tone profile and softer feel on the fingers makes these a decent bet for percussive styles.
Material: Coated steel with steel core
Winding: Roundwound
Tone: Prominent upper-mids, appealing overtones
+ Excellent contemporary tone profile
+ They’ll last you a long time
+ Stealth black finish is pretty cool
- Not the best old-school option
The Black Beauties are coated in black polymer to extend the life of the strings, maintaining their just-out-the-pack freshness for longer. The coating is DR Strings’ K3 coating, which was rolled out in 2010 with the promise that it wouldn’t tame any of the string’s frequency response, and nor would the coating flake.
We players can get a little superstitious with coated strings, with even the suggestion that there’s something between your finger or pick and the string being enough to play tricks with our mind, but these strings are excellent, with a healthy amount of upper-mids and trebly sparkle complementing a loud low end.
Indeed, for coated strings, these have exceptional brightness, a musical liveliness that will work well for modern styles.
Material: 80/20 bronze with Nanoweb coating
Winding: Roundwound
Tone: Quite bright
+ Coating extends the strings' life
+ Produces a unique bright tone
+ Smooth feel
- May be too bright for some
The acoustic bass is a more specialist instrument but here Elixir has looked at what works on its guitar strings and implemented it on this bass. The company has coated the 80/20 bronze cores with its well-known Nanoweb coating, and let us tell you, they are very bright!
The Nanoweb coating isn’t for everyone but we love the smooth feel it produces, reducing the string squeak whilst sliding notes. The coating is also fantastic for longevity, it works a treat and will preserve your strings for multiple more months than a standard set. If you hate restringing your guitar, the Elixirs will be your best friend.
If you prefer slightly warmer acoustic bass strings, then the Elixirs won’t be up your street, however, we feel like they produce a lovely resonance without any intrusive, harsh overtones.
Material: Nickel-wound steel with silk-wrapped steel core
Winding: Flatwound
Tone: Super mellow
+ Magnificent vintage bass tone
+ Great feel
+ Fundamentally balanced tones
- Not the most versatile
Let’s round out the list with something a little special, for those occasions when you want to go into record and you need everything, y’know, just so. Made in Austria, these Thomastik-Infeld flatwounds will give you warm, mellow bass tones, with more than a hint of the upright about them.
They are constructed from a ribbon flatwound nickel-plated steel wrap with a round steel core that’s wrapped in a silk inlay. With the round core, there’s an extra degree of flexibility and a more relaxed feel.
Allied to the flatwound’s inherent smooth profile, that round core helps make these exceptionally approachable. For this money, they should be, of course.
Best bass strings: Buying advice
How to choose the best bass strings for you
You can trust Guitar World Our expert reviewers spend hours testing and comparing guitar products so you can choose the best for you. Find out more about how we test.
String choice is one of our fundamental gear decisions. Which set is right for you is a combination of a number of factors, of which price is usually always one.
Bass strings can be a considerable investment, but 30 bucks should get you a very decent set. We have a few options in this guide that present excellent value with no lack of quality. The Rotosound RS66LD Swing Bass 66 will cost less than 20 dollars, and they’re awesome.
In terms of tone, there are a few considerations to be made that will ultimately decide what type of string you go for, and the type of winding on the string plays a big part.
Which strings are better: roundwound, flatwound or tapewound?
Starting with roundwounds, in which the alloy wrap around the steel core is exactly that, a thin filament of round wire that wraps the core. These are most common, with a stainless steel or nickel-plated steel wrap. With a stainless steel wrap, they’ll be among the brightest bass strings you can buy, with a pronounced low end and a fair degree of brightness. Introducing nickel into the mix can tame a little of the string’s brightness for a more vintage sound.
Flatwounds are constructed from a wire wrapping that is flattened, thus the string feels smooth to the touch, and these place more of a tonal emphasis on the lows and mids. Ideal for fretless basses, when you want to preserve your fretboard, they also reduce string noise and are just the ticket for ’60s-style bass tones, for Motown thump and all that.
Tapewound strings will typically have a nylon coating over them and will take that old-school tone further, giving you an electric bass tone that approximates the sound of an acoustic upright bass. They are an excellent option for more muted fingerstyle bass tones, and have been used by the likes of Paul McCartney to good effect. You will typically find these in a heavier gauge to compensate for the low tension of the string, but they will feel very easy to play.
Are coated bass strings worth it?
More generally, coated strings can add a few weeks of life to your strings. The coating used on strings protects their metallic surface from corrosion which is exacerbated due to the natural oils from your fingers and the acidity of your sweat.
However, that long-life can come at a premium, but if you crave new-string freshness it can save you money in the long run.
Some players feel the coating takes a little off the top end, as though they’d been played in for a few hours, but the counter to that is that they stay as they are out of the packet for longer.
How we choose the best bass strings for this guide
Here at Guitar World, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything guitar related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products for our guides.
When choosing what we believe to be the best bass strings available right now, we combine our hands-on experience, user reviews and testimonies and engage in lengthy discussions with our editorial colleagues to reach a consensus about the top products in any given category.
First and foremost, we are guitarists, and we want other players to find the right product for them. So we take into careful consideration everything from budget to feature set, ease of use and durability to come up with a list of what we can safely say are the best bass strings on the market right now.
Read more about our rating system, how we choose the gear we feature, and exactly how we test each product.
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