I bought these after reading hundreds of rave reviews on Talkbass.com. I put them on my 1989 Peavey Fury, plugged it in and then...SHEER HEAVEN!!!!!You couldn't crowbar me away from that bass all night. Now I'm actually a REAL bassist and not a low-end "guitard" with piano strings. I'm gonna put DA flats on all my basses. My wallet also thanks me since I won't be trashing filthy roundwounds every other week. Keep rockin D'Addario!!!!

Maybe the ratings which I gave to the D'Addario ECB80 strings are deflated, but the reason that I would not give a straight 5.0 score is because there just might be a better set of flatwound bass strings out there.

So far, I haven't found that better set.

I've had good results with other flatwound strings until I acquired a Rogue AB-304 acoustic electric bass. Not wishing to use the stock roundwound strings which came with the instrument, I decided on using a set of flatwounds only to discover that the E string wouldn't fit through the bridge.

I wasn't going to risk ruining the bridge by trying to drill into the bridge to accomodate the .100 size E string and I didn't want to pay a luthier to work on or replace the bridge.

The solution was as simple as a different set of strings with narrower E string.

The D'Addario ECB80XL strings, so far, have exceeded the quality of other brands that I've used.