Warwick Red Label vs Black Label Bass Strings – Bass Practice Diary – 25th February 2020

I’ve wanted to test the Warwick Red Label bass strings for a while, because I’ve always felt they represent incredible value for money. The five string set in the video cost me €12.40 on Thomann, while a four string set at the time was less than €10. That’s incredibly cheap for stainless steel round wound bass strings from a reputable brand like Warwick. But value for money is one thing and performance is another, so I wanted to properly test these budget strings against the more expensive Warwick Black Label stainless steel bass strings.

Warwick Bass Strings

Warwick make a lot of different types of bass strings now. They have their high end coated strings called EMP, which are more expensive, but the coating will make the strings last much longer. There wouldn’t be any point in comparing a coated and uncoated bass string. The coated strings would obviously age better, so I didn’t include those in this comparison.

Warwick also manufacture bronze acoustic bass guitar strings in both Red and Black Label sets. I usually put the Warwick Red Label bronze strings on my Warwick Alien Deluxe Acoustic 6-string Bass Guitar. No other 6-string bronze set comes close to being as affordable for that quality of string. They also make tapewound strings which also sound good on acoustic bass guitar.

But if you’re looking for conventional stainless steel or nickel wound guitar strings, then Warwick has three products. Red Label, Yellow Label and Black Label, with red being the cheapest and black the most expensive. The Yellow label strings are nickel plated and made in the USA. They tend to be similar in price to the black label strings, but slightly cheaper. I didn’t include them in this test because I wanted to test the Stainless Steel Red Label strings against a similar Stainless Steel set, which is the Black Label strings.