Acoustic string journal

artiebear

@Tannin , wow, just got around to reading this. A very honest and relatable review of the various options on the market. Owning 25 plus acoustic guitars and needing a "control" maker/string, I have spent a long time locked in with D'Addario as a brand and only varying between EJ (phosphor bronze) 12's and 13's. ( I get them by the box and use them accordingly before they go dead ), all is simplified ( the guitar varies, the string remains the same ). 

I have been prompted to try a number of brands, only to come back home very quickly over the years and have never before managed to buy into the extended life concept ( cannot stand shaggy strings, too soft sounding across the board and lacking the "new string " sound that works in front of a mic. ) 

Just recently I received a Lowden ( pretty much factory fresh ) with their own ( Cleartone made ) strings on ( 12-53 ). Upon receipt, my ritual of receiving a guitar over the years has been to take off the strings ( however new ), and after a bit of TLC, stick on a set of EJ's ( gauge dependant)

For the first time in an age, I left the Lowden strings. on. Love them.Smoother to the touch under the wound strings, retaining after 4 weeks a pleasant low end clarity and, unlike my EJ strings a smoother response on the unwound strings ( without, as you pointed out ) a chance of "over lightness/  fizz, especially on the 2nd string..

Just bought a few sets on the 2 for 1 Black Friday deal, 

Tannin

Cheers @artiebear. Interesting post.

So Lowden = Cleartone. I didn't know that. I have yet to try either one but I'll be putting in another strings order soon. Lowden and Cleartone were brands I had in mind to try out, so I'll include one or 'tother. 

artiebear said:

all is simplified ( the guitar varies, the string remains the same 

Wasn't that a Led Zep album?

Tannin

Edited the posts at the top of the thread again today with the following updates:

Longer-term use of the Galli LS, the GHS Americana, and the Pyramid Western Folk round core confirms that all three of these are very nice strings indeed. Happy to buy all of them again. The Rotosound Nexus set performed well too.

New strings in this update are Curt Mangan Fusion Matched coated phosphor bronze 12s, D'Addario EFT16 Flat Top light ground wound (I started a separate thread about these very peculiar strings) , SIT Phosphor Bronze lights (these are the "ordinary" SIT bronze strings, not the more expensive Royal Bronze I liked so much), Dogal Phosphor Bronze Round Core (very expensive and no bloody good at all), DR Sunbeam light round core and a Newtone Master Class acoustic baritone set.

artiebear

Tannin said:

Cheers @artiebear. Interesting post.

So Lowden = Cleartone. I didn't know that. I have yet to try either one but I'll be putting in another strings order soon. Lowden and Cleartone were brands I had in mind to try out, so I'll include one or 'tother. 

artiebear said:

all is simplified ( the guitar varies, the string remains the same 

Wasn't that a Led Zep album?

Three weeks into a new set of Lowden's on the Adirondack/coco F series guitar. Been playing it everyday which usually means time for a change a week ago , using my regular EJ16's. They feel great and still sound pretty much as when first installed. They do feel ever so slightly tighter, but being a multiple tuning player that's definitely a positive. They just sent me another 10 sets so that saves me a few string changes as far as the Lowden F goes. Everything else gets the EJ16/17 sets which I still like a lot for everyday use. 

Re the Zep reference , what a great title for a comparison blog using multiple guitars with the same strings installed 

Mellish

Cleartone strings  is a subsidiary of Everly Music Company founded in Burbank CA in 2008 (I think) by Phil Everly. Tried them but not for me  

Tannin

A TLDR SHORT LIST:

These are the strings I like best so far. All of this is subject to change, but looking over the many strings I've tried so far, these are the ones I keep ordering more of. 

BRASS

* Martin Authentic MA140. (Cheap.) That ringing brass zing just does it for me. Fantastic sound.

* Darco. (Very cheap.) The packaging is plain and you don't get six little paper envelopes, each with a single string. But they are the same excellent Martin strings out of the same factory.

* SIT Silencers. (Cheap.) Supposed to be "compression wound" and semi-flat surfaced for noise-free fretting, which they aren't. But they are bloody good strings.

PHOSPHOR BRONZE

* SIT Royal Bronze (Cheap.)  A fine balance between richness, warmth and ring. Great strings!

* Galli LS. (Cheap.) Excellent. Nice feel; lovely balanced sound. Very hard to decide whether I like these or the SIT Royal Bronze best. 

* GHS Americana. (Mid-price.) Not coated but "cyrogenically treated", whatever that means. Lovely balance: not shrill, not flat, just right. 

COATED

* Elixir Nanoweb. (Expensive.) Love then or hate them, they are still the standard by which other coated strings are judged.

* Rotosound Nexus.  (Mid-price.) Very nice strings, good feel, good sound, long life. 

* Santa Cruz Parabolic Low Tension. (Expensive.) Outstanding. 

ROUND CORE

* DR Sunbeam. (Low-mid-price.)  Lovely sweet strings.

* Pyramid Western Folk. (High-mid-price.) Lovely feel, very flexible but not sloppy. I like these a lot.  Pyramids or Sunbeams? Hard to say. I've ordered more of both. 

BARITONE:

* John Pierce light baritone. Best by far.

Mellish

@Tannin ; of those, two are my favourites: Martin MA140 and Elixir Nano. I can put either on my HD-28  a night  before a gig and not worry how my guitar will sound the next day  

Soupman

Just ordered a set of Newtone Heritage 12's for my Flambeau LFW-3C. It's 38 years old now (owned from new). It usually gets D'Addario EJ26's 11-52 phosphor bronze but I have read so many positive reviews on here that I thought them worth a try. Will let you know how it reacts!

shufflebeat

This is cool.

CavemanGrogg

Interesting read, curious to find out if you only tried 1 set of each, or played around for with a few sets of each before you made your mind up about them.

Tannin

Cheers lads.

@Mellish - is that the Elixir phosphor bronze or the 80/20? Either way, they are very different strings, the Martin and the Elixir. But "different" is no bad thing. 

@CavemanGrogg - great question. It varies. Each individual set is mentioned in the log (if you can be bothered trawling through the whole list) but in general I buy one set and try it on one guitar. Depending on how that goes, I might buy more of the same for the same guitar, or for a different guitar, or not buy any more. Some examples:

Sfarzo Alloy 5109. Bought one set, thought they were awful. Haven't tried them on a different guitar and won't because that whacky .015 B string will buzz no matter what guitar I put them on. 

Santa Cruz Parabolic Low Tension. Bought one set, thought they were great. Haven't tried them on a different guitar yet because (unless I miss my guess) they will be really good on most of them. But I will, sooner or later. Plenty of other strings I haven't tried at all to test out first - but I do have a set of their Medium Tension here, and have a second set of Low Tensions on order.

Dogal Round Core. Tried one crappy set, cut them in half and threw them away in a bad temper before even hearing a single chord  from them. But (rather against my better judgement)  I decided to give them another chance, and have ordered another lot - but first I'll have to find a guitar that they physically fit onto as the ball ends are oversize. Probably one of the older instruments will be OK as I expect that their bridge plate holes will have worn a little larger with years of use. I am not going to take a rat-tail file to a practically brand new $4000 instrument just because one daft string manufacturer can't get their ball ends right.

Martin/Darco brass 12s (same string under different names). I've re-ordered these several times and doubtless will again because I like them a lot. I have guitars I don't think they would work so well on, but in general, they are one of my "benchmark" strings against which others are compared.

D'Addario Flat Tops. One set only. I learned enough from that set to be confident that I won't like them on any of my other guitars either, so no plan to buy more. But never say never - they might go well on a resonator, for example.

Last example: anything that doesn't stand out, for good or bad. I've had one set each of strings like Ernie Ball Earthwood, Rotosound Jumbo King, and Martin EC Signature. None of these struck me as strings to write home about. I have no urge to sample them again when there are so many interesting and untried strings still to look at. On the other hand, there was nothing wrong with any of them either. Suppose I had to play a gig tomorrow and needed strings and all I could get was the Earthwoods. Would they do? Of course. They'd be fine.

As a rule, I find that I'm pretty clear on how good a particular set is on a particular guitar after it's been on for a week or two. Sometimes (not often) I form a clear view inside the first hour, but if I don't like them I nearly always force myself to leave them on for a week in case I change my mind as they settle in.

I'm not seeing any noticeable variation between different sets of the same string. Even the hand-wound strings seem (mostly) to be identical from set to set. The big variation is when I put the same string on different instruments. 

One day, if I keep on doing this silly string journal for long enough, I'll run out of exciting new brands to try and fall back on revisiting old friends like the Earthwoods or the Jumbo Kings. I know that there are combinations (String X + Guitar Y) that I used to like early on that I don't like now, and doubtless there will be ones I didn't much like before that I love the second time around. Whether any of this is any help to any other player ... well, probably not directly. 

Mellish

@Tannin ; Elixir Phosphor Bronze mate. Martin MA 140 mainly but, if I need more punch, I'll sling on Elixir Nano Phosphor Bronze. Works for me  

Tannin

I love it when the postie brings me a parcel from .... well, from a number of places, but in this instance from Strings and Beyond in North Carolina.



But which ones first?

The Sunbeams, the Pyramids, the GHS Americanas, and the Galli LS are old friends too good not to order again. The other five are new to me. Getting new strings isn't as much fun as getting a new guitar, but how many of us can afford to buy nine new guitars at once?

Mellish

@Tannin ; - of the pictured strings I've tried DR Sunbeams, Pyramid, and Dunlop... I liked the Sunbeams, wasn't keen on the Pyramid or Dunlop, but I'd be very interested to learn  your thoughts  about Cleartone. I couldn't get them off fast enough!  

Tannin

Cheers @Mellish I love the Sunbeams. In fact two days ago, not knowing when my Strings & Beyond order was going to arrive, I ordered two extra sets of Sunbeams from Melbourne just in case of emergency. (In these pandemic times, mail to and from the US or UK is utterly unpredictable. Sometimes it takes three days, sometimes it takes three months. No joke - I've had both.)

I find it interesting that you like Sunbeams but dislike Pyramids, while I like them both and think they are very similar. Were you using the Western Folk (as pictured), or the Hand Polished Western Folk (almost the same package but very different sound and feel), or perhaps one of their several hex core sets? Or have I been misled by putting the Sunbeams and the Pyramids on different guitars? What suits one can sound dreadful on another. As it happens, my plan was to replace the Pyramids on the Mineur with Sunbeams in a week or so: in light of your comments, that becomes more interesting still. 

I'm not expecting to think much of the Dunlops. This is quite unfair as I've never tried them. I expected the La Bella Golden Alloy 80/20s to be pedestrian too - and they have turned out to be very nice in their own way. I like nice surprises.:) 

As for the Cleartones, they seem to be a polarising string. Some people really like them, others the reverse. I'm just annoyed that I had to pay $26.50 for one set when you lucky people in the UK can buy sets of 6 for $22 from Thomann (who don't ship to Oz).

CavemanGrogg

Out of curiosity, what do you use for a reference, do you even have and use one?  And do you refer back to your reference between trying new brands, materials, types of strings, much like how one neutralises their pallette in between different wines or whiskys at tasting events?

Mellish

@Tannin ; - no, to be fair to the brand the Pyramids I tried were not Western Folk but couldn't say which others they were. La Bella is a brand I like. DR Rare is another. Heavily coated or feel it to me, especially felt on the unwound trebles. But they sound good despite that  

Mellish

@CavemanGrogg ; - I have two favourites: Martin MA140, Elixir Nanoweb. I'll compare any other strings to those. I'll use MA140 80/20 mostly, but if an open air gig, I'll use Elixir PB for a bit extra punch. Might not work for some but does for me  

Mellish

@Tannin ; - the Pyramid strings that I tried, didn't like but couldn't remember which ones they were? They were Premium Bronze  

Tannin

CavemanGrogg said:

Out of curiosity, what do you use for a reference, do you even have and use one?  And do you refer back to your reference between trying new brands, materials, types of strings, much like how one neutralises their pallette in between different wines or whiskys at tasting events?

@CavemanGrogg - yes. A fresh set of Elixir Nanoweb phosphor bronze goes on for a half hour before every string change to cleanse my aural palette. I have people who take care of these things.

Actually, no. That would be an ideal way to do it, of course, but not really practical. Just the same I try to do a few things to provide a bit of reference as best I can. (And a few other things I do tend to mess that up again.)

I have six guitars (not counting the baritone, the bass, or the upside-down leftie). When I change strings on one, the others stay the same for a while and provide some orientation. And between trying new stuff I often come back to favourite strings on particular guitars (SIT Silencers on the Maton dred; Elixirs on the Messiah; John Pierces on the Thunderhawk) or at least fairly similar kinds of string. I generally try not to do weird stuff twice in a row on the same guitar. This helps keep things sane. For example, I might put on a set of good plain vanilla phosphor bronze strings between trying flat wounds and nickel wounds. 

But things conspire to make it difficult. 

(1) My guitars keep changing. No joke! Four of them are new and are still opening up - the Huon Pine Angel is (probably) pretty much done now but the 12 and the Messiah are both still changing, as is the Mineur. And the biggest change has come from my Maton dreadnought which has changed *a lot* just this year. It's 8 years old but it spent the first 5 years as a case queen, and I know they say that cedar doesn't open up the way spruce or mahagony does, but there is no doubt at all: it's a different guitar now.  But that's a subject for a whole new thread. Even the 15-year-old Guild is changing: I suspect that it didn't get a lot of play time until it arrived here in Chateau Tannin.

(2) My technique keeps changing. I transitioned from a flatpicker into a fingerpicker only a couple of years or so ago and I'm learning new stuff all the time, and playing old things in new ways.  One little example: just yesterday I asked my regular nail lady if she could do the same thing she usually does only a bit stronger because I was wearing one nail out too fast. So she did something completely different! Don't ask me exactly what. Between me not understanding anything about nail care and her not understanding very much English, I have no idea. But my new nails are stronger than ever and - you guessed it - I'm getting a different sound out of them. That alone is probably a bigger change in the sound I get than many a string change. (But I play with flesh as well as nails, so there at least is a point of fairly stable reference.)

(3) My ears change. Or at least the way I hear things does. 

Nevertheless, I bumble along, making notes as I go and (I think) vaguely progressing. Right now I'm pondering the Angel. I loved the SIT Royal Bronze on it, and liked the Galli LS if anything even more. Then I tested Flat Tops on it (yuk!) and reverted to the normal SIT bronze after that. (Good ordinary strings. Nothing special but perfectly OK.)  It's nearly due for a change. Do I (a) put SIT Royal Bronze on it to compare them directly against the SIT standard bronze, one after the other? Or (b) Galli LS because I have a set here and it's my favourite guitar and they just might be the very best strings for it I've ever tried? Then again, I have several other uncoated phosphor bronze sets I have yet to try at all. Should I (c) delay the joy of putting Royal Bronze or Gallis on it and force myself to try the Darcos or the Dunlops? Or (d) go really way out and try those mega-expensive gold-plated Optimas? 

It's a tough life being retired and having nothing better to do than sit on the deck in the afternoon sunlight and tinker with guitars.