Just got some flatwounds on my Jazz Bass...

[Perfessor]

By the way the oil will keep the strings from getting tarnished.

[dDigitalPimp]

Flats are inferior.

 

 

crazy talk, flats rule your face.

[lowndown]

Pretty nice. I picked up a set of Rotosounds earlier and just had a chance to get them on my bass. SUPER smooth feeling. They're a little tacky feeling though - will that go away after I've played them a while? I'm not noticing a huge difference in sound. They're a little thumpier and deeper sounding than the roundwounds I had on. Then again, the Roundwounds were almost four months old. Will the flatwounds just continue to get deeper and thumpier as they break in? One thing I noticed while restringing is that my Jazz Bass has a noticeable amount of fretwear. Now, I'm not hard on it at all, and the bass is only four months old. Is it normal to see small grooves in the frets under the strings? They aren't extremely deep, but, like I said, they're definitely noticeable. If this isn't normal, does it require immediate attention? Will the small grooves affect anything?

I play with D'Addario flats which sound great, and are smoother than the Roto's. I've used both, and prefer the D'Addario over the Roto's for both sound and feel.

With flats you won't notice any problems because of the fretwear from the rounds. Flats IMHO not only play better than rounds, but the sound better and do less damage to the frets, a winner in my book!

[lowndown]

And another thing... stick to using standard gauge flats over heavy or light gauge. The heavy gauge flats just sound too flabby. If you play Dub then they're good for that, but anything else use standard gauge!

[texasbassplayer]

I remember when I first tried flats. Actually I don't; it was 30 years ago!
Don't worry about a bit of fret wear unless you start getting fret buzz.