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Anyone else have any experience with these colored strings? I think they're made by DR.

I'm usually pretty handy when it comes to chasing down electronics issues, but I'm a little stumped. I've got an active G&L bass in for a setup and it has the weirdest ground buzz. The buzz goes away if I touch the bridge, control knobs, or input jack as usual. The strange thing is it only barely goes away when I touch the strings, but it does go away when I touch the machine heads. Is there any possibility that these colored strings are preventing me from grounding the guitar when I touch the strings? Or am I missing something simpler? As an experiment I stuck a normal guitar string in between the bass string and saddle, when I touched that string the buzz went away.

There are also 3 toggle switches and when I touch them the buzzing remains, unlike the other controls, and the pickup selector actually amplifies the buzz. Having said that there is no ground wire coming off the housings of these switches, and if I touch the bridge or one of the pots that buzzing coming from the switches is eliminated.

I found this article online (for whatever that's worth) that seems to confirm my consternation...

https://epublish.panaprint.com/article/ ... ticle.html

I have always respected Mr Sadowsky and refer to his other research often. My personal opinion places products from DR at the very bottom of the list for strings in general...

The tuning keys confirm this for me. The core wire is conducting and grounding through the string balls (I assume it's a top loader).

The only thing that gives me pause is the fact I remember tapewound bass strings from my jazz band school days and they did not have any issues like this. And I see they still make nylon tapewound strings....

_________________
Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

It actually has the option to be string through or top load. When the customer brought it in with the Black strings on he had just bought the bass, and it was set up as a top loader. He wanted me to change it so it was string through. So now the ball ends are sitting in grommets on the back of the guitar and not grounded, and we have all kinds of buzzing that I assume he never noticed when he bought the bass, so perhaps this phenomenon is less pronounced when those ball ends make contact with the bridge as you mention Brian.

Anyway I already hated these colored strings, they feel like plastic, and the color starts rubbing off almost immediately, I guess here's one more reason to recommend against them.

Roger is a genius and a VERY good guy too. We have a mutual client who played with the greats and was on the tonight show band for a decade or more, Robert Hurst. Robert is now a University of Michigan Professor and also a great guy.

DR strings suck.

Replace the strings and see what you have. I save old bass strings in good shape to use in the shop if this happens and for this purpose.

Did I mention that DR strings suck?

Confirmed!

I forgot I had an old set of GHS bass boomers. The plain nickel string defeated the ground buzz, just like one would expect.

These colored strings were definitely the culprit.

Very cool - don't ya love it when your hunches pan out?

Interesting. I've never run into this problem but the only coated eletric guitar strings I have ever used were D'Adarrio and even then mostly I use uncoated for electric. Good to know!