It’s no secret that Glenn Fricker has some opinions on bassists. They’re lazy, they don’t know their parts, and they don’t know how to change their strings, or claim that they like the old string sound (which is total bullshit). Glenn is also famously a huge advocate of boiling bass strings to give them a bit of life back if you’re a player on a budget. And I always thought that there was a really specific process for this, but nope, you just boil them.
In the video, Glenn does an A/B comparison of 15 year old strings before and after a quick boiling. And it is like night and day. First off, visually, they look brand new. Glenn shows off all of the gross bass player hand goo that gets boiled away in the process (best not to use the pot to cook anything else). And the sound is like a miracle. They sound like they were straight out of the package. Note that this is only a temporary fix and to be used on only a few recordings at most, so don’t count on just boiling your problems away when the strings sound dead again.
Glenn is the definition of THE Man. He has all sorts of awesome music production tips and tricks, so check out the rest of his videos if you aren’t familiar (How is that possible?). Give it a shot if you’re low on cash or just curious. You’ll save enough money to get some lessons so you can learn how to play that bass of yours.
