Just took up the bass 6 months ago. Once I knew I would be sticking with it, I picked up a Jay Turser "Beatle Bass" since the Fender I was using was just too big and heavy for this petite female. I followed the general advice to switch to flat wounds, and am soo glad I did. These Ernie Ball strings are so much easier to work with, and easier on my hands, that I can't even think of going back to round wound strings. One note about them thought... in order to get the ball ends into the tail piece, I had to remove all the strings and hinge the tail piece over to better access the holes. Of course, that meant that the bridge had to be repositioned, as well.

I just put these on my '85 Aria Pro RSB Special I bass a couple of days ago, I had some EB Extra Slinkys on my bass and liked the sound a lot but was fighting fret noise with the roundwounds. Anyway, the tone of the flatwounds is amazing, of course they are not as bright and piano sounding as the Slinkys, they have a full deep rich tone with good mids and highs. They are a bit sticky when brand new, but after playing on them one night and wiping them down good, they played awesome the second night. If you want strings that are smoother than roundwounds, that have very little fret noise (roundwound clanking on the frets), I would highly recommend these strings.