String types, formulations, brands - care to share your experiences?

AliGorie

Lewy said:

 ya gota admit - it's a laugh.

   

Dismissing something because of how it's marketed is as daft as using it because of how it's marketed. if people have tried the Monels and like them who cares what the history is or what the blurb says?

it's ALL daft Lewy - and - it's all a laugh u cant dismiss that.
I liked Gibson's Mona-Steel strings 50 yrs ago, much better than what was available then - Cathedral Strings and Black Diamond Strings known as Bailing Wire which corroded and rusted in the all pervading damp. But then they 'discovered' Bronze - which had been used in Piano string manufacture for yonks before - wonder why ?, and for acoustics at least, nickel alloy strings went outa favor - we were lead to believe they sounded better - trouble was piano strings are not touched / played by human hands - bummer. Come to think of it I've never heard of a piano being strung with Monel strings - dont even know if they make 'em, a 'retro' sounding Steinway - nah - wouldnt be very Authentic even with a torrefied soundboard.
 maybe it was the margins on raw materials that drove us to the Bronzy side? who knows, all a bit groundhog days - yeah.

BTW I do like TR's steel string tone - 90's and before.

ESBlonde

I can't get on with coated strings, I don't like the feel as the finish disintegrates which they always do on my sweaty hands.

Martin PBs have provided the tone and feel on my Epiphone for a couple of decades now. As stated above there are some strings that suit certain guitars and part of the joy of ownership is discovering they combination of brand/gauge/guitar.

TimmyO

Interesting stuff fellas, thanks.

I think next month if there are any spare £ I'll order a bunch of stuff to try out - will certainly include Newtone and Pearse as well as D'Add and I may as well try a set of Monel (although the video demos I heard didn't really light any fires, but appreciate these things can be difficult to distinguish online) 


One last Q on this though - on my Yamaha dread, for me the plain strings when used ith a plectrum are a bit too... PING! - loud, strident - not bright/brittle but quite penetrating in a way that catches my ear for the wrong reason (I'm describing it badly I know...) - are any brands/types likely to be significantly different on the unwound strings? IS this why people sometimes use mismatched bridge pins? Or am I being too picky on a mid-range guitar? :-) 

ta
Tim 

Jalapeno

I use Elixirs on electric & acoustic - love the feel, and they last. I got my Tom Anderson with a new set on, and they felt right.  I understand the tone comments, but just turn up (and use the tone control )

Exceptions to that rule are for jazz:

-D'Addario Gypsy 10s on the maccaferri style - they keep their brightness, and less prone (not at all prone) to snapping unlike Argentines, Galli etc.  Did flirt with Newtone for a while, but though they lasted they went very dull, very quickly.

Archtop - Thomastik-Infeld Swing 12s flatwounds - these are a joy to play

AliGorie

ESBlonde said:

I can't get on with coated strings, I don't like the feel as the finish disintegrates which they always do on my sweaty hands.

Martin PBs have provided the tone and feel on my Epiphone for a couple of decades now. As stated above there are some strings that suit certain guitars and part of the joy of ownership is discovering they combination of brand/gauge/guitar.

staying with Tm's original query "String types, formulations, brands - care to share your experiences?It's not the 'feel', -
a lot of £5 a set (or less) strings are quite bright - even metallic - this suites many of the 'budget' or 'student' models - livens up a dull unresponsive guitar - they also last due to they're deliberate formulation - but put them on a responsive, sensitive guitar and (if ya got the ears to hear) you'll notice the effect - bit like far eastern hi fi's in the 70's / 80's - in your face midrange / treble  but no real body / depth and quite fatiguing to the ear.
On the other hand - I've suggested the strings I use to players and invariably they have not liked them - I come to the conclusion - typically strings I choose have a fairly uncolored  though full, round, smooth sound - on my guitars but as you say ES, the guitar / string compatibility thing comes into play, also the players idea of a 'good sound'.
Funny - the strings get blamed for making the guitar not sound pleasing, when most of the sound is generated from the guitar it's self.
e.g. - I put a set of Thomastik-Infeld Thomastik SB112 Spectrum Bronze on sub £600 far eastern martin copy and it REALLY didn't like them - or was it the other way round ?, whereas Newtone MC's sound pretty good on same guitar.

ICBM

I finally got around to trying a set of the Martin Monels - a customer bought a couple of different gauge sets for one of his guitars and we chose to put the 13s on it, so he gave me the 12s to try.

I have to admit I was expecting something a bit more sophisticated than what appear to be simple fairly heavy nickel roundwounds, given the 'vintage construction' marketing - I'm not really sure what I expected about the sound either, but...

They're not as different from my usual phosphor-bronze D'Addarios as I thought they might be, but what difference there is is not particularly inspiring. They actually feel slightly softer (in tension) than I expected from the gauges and the slightly 'rougher' feel under my fingers - but the roughness is annoying, they grate more when I slide my fingers up them. Soundwise they're just a bit lacking in something - hard to put a finger on what. They certainly don't sound brash and trashy like new 80/20 bronze, and since I normally like slightly older strings when they've lost that initial brashness, I thought I quite liked them at first. But actually they're just a bit meh… they don't have the richness and sparkle of new PBs. Apparently some people like them because they don't go dull quickly like bronze strings, but that may just be because they're dull to begin with! They don't have the nice 'thuddy' sound of old PBs.

I can't decide to leave them on for long enough to find out if they do develop it, or cut my losses - I don't tend to kill strings quickly so it may be a while before that happens, and to be honest I'm not sure I want to wait that long...

Winny_Pooh

@icbm they're pretty marmite, a friend really dislikes them on dreads but says they are fantastic on his braz OM.

ICBM

Winny_Pooh said:

@icbm they're pretty marmite, a friend really dislikes them on dreads but says they are fantastic on his braz OM.

Mine are on a Gibson Dove - dreadnought. Maybe I should have asked first .

Annoyingly I broke the G string getting the old D'Add PBs off as well...

Winny_Pooh

^ Definitely try the Newtones at some point, they are brilliant.

ICBM

Winny_Pooh said:

^ Definitely try the Newtones at some point, they are brilliant.

My favourites are actually the DR Rares, but I've been meaning to try Newtones for a while… just ordered a set and some electric ones as well. Not cheap, but if they're good it doesn't matter since I normally only change them about once a year, or less!

bbill335

ICBM said:

I finally got around to trying a set of the Martin Monels - a customer bought a couple of different gauge sets for one of his guitars and we chose to put the 13s on it, so he gave me the 12s to try.

I have to admit I was expecting something a bit more sophisticated than what appear to be simple fairly heavy nickel roundwounds, given the 'vintage construction' marketing - I'm not really sure what I expected about the sound either, but...

They're not as different from my usual phosphor-bronze D'Addarios as I thought they might be, but what difference there is is not particularly inspiring. They actually feel slightly softer (in tension) than I expected from the gauges and the slightly 'rougher' feel under my fingers - but the roughness is annoying, they grate more when I slide my fingers up them. Soundwise they're just a bit lacking in something - hard to put a finger on what. They certainly don't sound brash and trashy like new 80/20 bronze, and since I normally like slightly older strings when they've lost that initial brashness, I thought I quite liked them at first. But actually they're just a bit meh… they don't have the richness and sparkle of new PBs. Apparently some people like them because they don't go dull quickly like bronze strings, but that may just be because they're dull to begin with! They don't have the nice 'thuddy' sound of old PBs.

I can't decide to leave them on for long enough to find out if they do develop it, or cut my losses - I don't tend to kill strings quickly so it may be a while before that happens, and to be honest I'm not sure I want to wait that long...

Do they work better with a magnetic pickup than bronze strings?

AliGorie

bbill335 said:

Do they work better with a magnetic pickup than bronze strings?

do 'nickel' alloy strings work with MP's ? think electric guitar strings.
look up ferromagnetic (or ferrimagnetic). These include iron, nickel, cobalt, some alloys of rare-earth metals.
bronze / brass is not ferromagnetic so the steel core is all that is being 'picked up' by the MP - hence the reduced 'signal'.
 

ICBM

They will produce a much stronger signal from the wound strings. That may not actually be a good thing, since good magnetic pickups are calibrated for the weaker bronze wound strings, so you will probably find the low strings are then too loud.

I did wonder if they would be better on something like a Gibson J-160E where the pickup is essentially an electric guitar pickup (it's actually a P90, mounted under the top with raised polepieces)... but even though I'd quite like one it seemed a bit excessive to buy an expensive guitar just to try a set of strings .

songman

Since they have not been mentioned yet. Ernie Ball Aluminium Bronze. Wonderful on my HD28V!

bbill335

ICBM said:

They will produce a much stronger signal from the wound strings. That may not actually be a good thing, since good magnetic pickups are calibrated for the weaker bronze wound strings, so you will probably find the low strings are then too loud.

I did wonder if they would be better on something like a Gibson J-160E where the pickup is essentially an electric guitar pickup (it's actually a P90, mounted under the top with raised polepieces)... but even though I'd quite like one it seemed a bit excessive to buy an expensive guitar just to try a set of strings .

I've got one of those dirt cheap schaller soundhole pickups and could never get a good signal to amplify with acoustic strings. I'm hoping the monels will sound more electric-y.

ICBM

Out of curiosity I've just tried my Rare Earth in the guitar with Monels on.

It works fine. The wound strings are slightly louder than they would be if they were bronzes, and possibly very slightly louder than the plain strings - but only very slightly, if anything they might be a better balance with the plain strings, I always find the plains slightly too strident compared to the wound normally.

But I don't like the tone really - it's significantly more 'electric guitarry'. I do quite like that sometimes, especially if I'm committing heresy and distorting my acoustic , but for actually sounding like an acoustic it's less good.

crunchman

D'Addario PB for me.  I've tried other things over the years but I've always come back to them.

I did use Newtone for a bit, but I had 3 sets with a duff D string where the intonation was way off.  Going from other people's comments I think that's quite rare, and they were probably all from one bad batch, but it was enough to put me off of them.  D'Addario are always consistent.

I recently tried a set of the D'Addario Nickel Bronze that they were pushing at the Birmingham guitar show.  They were horrible - really tinny, and completely lacking bass.  I did wonder if it was the fizziness you get with new strings but they were still like that after several hours of playing, long after PB would have mellowed out to sound good.  Normally I try to get maximum life out of strings but I actually took these off the guitar and put PB back on.  I use 11s so maybe they would be better in a higher gauge where you might get a bit more low end.

ICBM

I'm now trying the Newtones (phosphor bronze 12s), which arrived while I was away last week despite being ordered nearly a month ago - be warned, if you need strings in a hurry they may not be the best choice. To be fair they do mention that there is a lead time of a couple of weeks, and possibly the summer holidays may have had something to do with that as well.

Instant first impressions are that they sound fantastic - but not 'new'! They have none of the trashy zing that brand-new strings usually do, which is both pleasing (for me - I hate very new strings) and a bit disconcerting, since they sound like they're played-in already. If they stay like this and don't dull after a while it will be ideal. They feel good - not noticeably lower tension, in fact strangely they felt *tighter* when stretching them, but more flexible and resonant when actually playing, which is again like old strings but also slightly odd on new ones. It's almost as if they have been pre-stretched or something…

I also have a set of nickel electric 11s to try, but my electric doesn't need restringing at the moment so that will have to wait. I will follow this up in a while once I'm past the time that new strings would normally have dulled down a bit.

TimmyO

Cool - look forward to hearing how they go - have looked in to them before but not taken the plunge yet 

Hoof

My experience tells me that there's all sorts of cork sniffery and misplaced brand loyalty going on  but it's really not worth paying that much attention to. Buy some good quality ones in a gauge that suits you, give them the odd clean and change them when they are knackered. 

I use D'Addarios, Ernie Balls and Rotosounds. I have used Dunlop, Dean Markley, DR and several others. They're all fine. I have also used some cheap outsourced generic chinese things that were branded by some company that endorsed my band for a short while and sent me a load of sets. They felt shit but I kept using them for a while on a couple of guitars out of curiosity and they lasted for quite a while. I gave them away in the endand went back to using whatever majjor brand that was convenient at the time.

I had a slight loyalty toward EB for a few years but that was because they were the only major brand that did a 11-54 set.