Jazzy. Depends how hard you hit them. I tend to dig in a bit so the colour starts to come off between the bridge and the neck but DR claim this has no effect on the sound or longevity of the strings. Mike Pisanek has a really light touch and his strings don't lose their colour at all. BTW, I'm not talking about huge areas of colour flaking off - more like little specks. I'll try to take a picture. The length along the fingerboard doesn't get 'damaged' at all.
 
In fact while I was typing this I remembered some pics I took of the blues on my epic. The D string is about as bad as they get - still not that noticeable. You can tell from the top left of the picture how hard i'm hitting the B string sometimes although this is the old style sating finish that was much less hard wearing than the current high gloss.

oops, forgot the pic..
 

 
Graeme

LaBella Slappers SN31 Custom Gauge
30-45-65-85
 
Bright, durable, reasonably priced and sound good.

I used to us DR but I switched to Curt Mangan Strings several years ago. They last as long as anything else I've used and sound just as good. If you become a sponsored artist, as I did, you can buy set of strings direct for around $10 to $15 Free shipping if you spend $20

Right now for me, the best sounding strings I'm tried for my Distillate are the Alembic's, though the only other ones I've tried were Rotosounds and DRs.  Overall very good strings, pick up a wide range of the frequencies very well.  On my fretless Essence I've tried a bunch of different flatwounds, but by far I like the TI's the best.  A bit pricey though....

D'Addario XL's...kept using other stuff but always seem to go back to the XL. It has always been, for my style of playing and the variety of gigs I played,  a wonderful all around set. They last, also.
 
Regards...
Steve

DR high beams all the way

Looking good Thomas. Step back nearly 40 years and I see Randy meisner.
 
graeme

TI Jazz flats on my Fretless Epic and my Distillate, DR high Beams on my fretted Epic.
 
Hello Thomas,
nice band site with good tunage as well
 
Mike

I like the Alembic CX strings, but find them a little aggressive for my needs.  I also really liked the DR Marcus Miller Fat Beams signature set.
 
I just threw out a set of LaBella medium flats for being just too dead almost from the start.  I had them on about six months and wasn't really noticing it so much as a problem until I tried to get a tone to record.  I couldn't get anything useful out of them.
 
I installed a set of medium scale chromes (45-100) and they fit perfectly on an SSB.  Length-wise, they'd be really close to too short on a 32 scale.  The tone is perfect and the recordings are coming out very well.  We'll see how they hold up.

Rotosound Funkmasters:  For Now.  Forever.

GHS Bass Boomers, 45-105.
 
Heard they were similar to the original Alembic strings on my Orion Fretless (my shop didn't have those). I do think there's a difference though...  
 
I used to play DR Hi-Beams on my fretted bass (Spoiler). I've also tried the Marcus Miller signatures. I may return to those.

No one else uses Elixir?  I really like the Elixir Polywebs.  They're bright and last a really long time.  Unfortunately, they're hard to find, and usually they need to be special ordered since the nanowebs seem to be more popular.

are the original Alembic Strings not good enough?
Sorry for these stupid question, but I ordered a SJ and my local dealer says, the strings are the best for this bass

I use DR Nickel Lowriders on my fretted Essence and Sunbeams on my freltess Europa. I just ordered a set of the Hellborg signature strings to try out on the Essence. They're suppose to have a stronger fundamental. We'll see...