Fender Musicmaster Bass

LDS

LDS

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I've had a Fender Musicmaster bass for a long time, but have never found a gauge of strings that seems to work well on it. on it. It's short-scale bass, almost as short as a guitar. Regular bass strings just don't seem to have enough tension and seem floppy on it.

I've considered trying the lowest 4 from a 5-string set.

Anyone have any experience with these little guys and can offer some advice?
 
I have a'78 Musicmaster and I just used i think the lightest set of rotosounds i had laying around, 105s i believe. It stayed in tune beautifully
 
if you want them to not be rubbery feeling, then you want the thicker gauges.
It might seem counter intuitive but lighter gauge bass strings have to be looser than thicker gauge.

Two ways to get lower pitch ..... one is to tune down (looser) and the other is to have more mass on the string (thicker -- larger gauge).
So with thicker gauges you can have the strings at a tighter tension 'cause the extra mass will get the pitch lower without loosening them.

This is why the bass strings on a spinet piano will be MUCH thicker than the bass strings on a 9 foot grand. The big grand gets enough mass in it's bass strings just from them being so long and so, they don't need to double and even triple wind them like they do on a little spinet.

The lowest strings on a 5 string set (I'm assuming by lower you mean pitch? So the thickest 4?) might be a good choice but I've never actually tried that.
Still ..... thicker strings equals higher tension at the same pitch.
 
I put a set of Rotosound RN 66LD strings ("Swing Bass" on the package) on the Musicmaster that I've had for a long time. Sure, these are long scale strings, but I find they really sing on the bass; I'm happy with the tone I'm able to get with them on.
 
I had a Musicmaster Bass for a while in the late '70's. Back then, Fender actually made short scale strings for these and Mustang Basses, I think the E was .115. Later they went light on the gauges and the strings got floppy. I sold the bass to a friend since I couldn't get the right strings anymore.

Kinda too bad, since it wasn't much of an adjustment to go back and forth between guitar and bass, and it still sounded like a bass.
 
The first new bass I ever had back in '83 was a Fender musicmaster, which replaced the 4th hand 3 string Kay that I'd been learning on. It took me months to pay for it as I was officially unemployed and I made a deal with the shop {Blanks on Kilburn High Road} that I'd only take it home when I'd payed for it fully.
It was a beauty and the strings that came with it were shortscale and pretty tough, yet bendable. Some years later I got another musicmaster and had the frets stonefiled down to convert it to a fretless. I had this set of smooth gold strings on them. But it wasn't the same when it was a fretless, I had to almost learn the instrument again. I swapped it in the end and I wish I still had it. I don't know what gauge the strings were coz back in those days, I wasn't even aware of such things.
So that was a pretty pointless post !
 
I've tried the Rotosounds, that's what I use pretty often on my Ric.

I haven't seen short scale bass strings in years, if they were available I'd put them on the Musicmaster and the EB-3.

.115's, eh? I'll look for those. The only 5 string sets I have have a .130 and my heaviest 4 string set has a .105.
 
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