What strings did Charlie Christian use?

[Litterick]

The 1945 Montgomery Ward Catalogue and Buyer's Guide (page 474) offers:

Dur-A-Glo Flat Wound Strings. Best quality. Surface Is highly polished, flat and smooth. Plain strings are steel wire. Wound strings are steel cores covered with specially processed Dur-A-Glo wire. Flat winding helps to prevent sore or calloused fingers.

I found this set for non-electric instruments on Reverb:

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Wow!

[Doug B]

So flat wounds existed then, but were they in common use?

Doug

[Litterick]

The fact that they were sold in the Montgomery Ward catalogue suggests they were widely used.

I have been searching patents (I know; I should get out more). I found a Russian patent from 1924; the translation is not perfect:

Typically when manufacturing strings to the main winding wire is wound from a wire of circular section, so that the production string has a rough surface due to looseness (local) between a contact of the turns of the winding. Due to this roughened surface of the strings and not the continuous contact between the winding turns of the string, prepared emye conventional manner, do not have the more sophisticated advantages, they would possess, be they solid, but not wavy (rough) surface and a tight contact coils between themselves.


The proposed method is intended to endow the said string consists in character and that the wire,
base string is wound flattened wire, whereby the string will have a smooth surface. The application thus manufactured strings in guitars, mandolins, harps, violins, and so on. sounds, according to the author, are obtained cleaner, sonorous and juicy deprived those harmful sh.ih impression sounds that porozhdayuts roughness due to the abundance of the strings in the conventional method of manufacture. Furthermore, the inventors observed to the strings produced according to the proposed method, allow sounds longer, smoother surface for the string encounters minimal resistance from the air during vibrations of the strings.

OBJECT OF THE INVENTION.

A method of manufacturing strings, characterized by winding wire on the main strings - the winding of the flattened wire.

[JazzNote]

A wound B? Never even thought about that. Wonder what it would be like. As a kid, I played unwound Gs but once I tried wound ones, I never looked back. But a wound B? There may be a good reason it went out of style.

The Thomastik medium and heavy Jazz-guitar strings from the 1970 and 80's were available with a wound B string, in fact here in Switzerland they did not sell these sets with a plain B. To get them i had to cross the border and buy in Germany. At the time Thomastik did not even reveal the gauge of the individual strings in the set. I remember that the wound B tended to lack presence so i went for plain B's. I still have one of the old wound ones in the drawer.

[Marty Grass]

You guys are great. This information is interesting today and will be priceless to historians years ahead. There will be some grad student doing a thesis in 2095 on the evolution of strings on the archaic electric guitar. This will be helpful.

Another grad student will present the invention of the plectrum, incorrectly stating that it was an invention of the late 1960s that replaced the bite technique.



Another student will incorrectly postulate that there were disposable electric guitars in that same period.



In all seriousness, this forum will be of value to some, perhaps only a few, in a hundred years. Imagine if this forum was active in 1910 and we had access to the daily thoughts of those musicians.

[princeplanet]

So, have we worked out what gauge these strings were in all likelihood?

[Doug B]

I started this thread and am amazed and delighted what it turned into. I asked what I thought was a simple question which came from a
passing thought and watched the improvising evolve! Group think indeed!

Cheers

Doug

[ruger9]

So, have we worked out what gauge these strings were in all likelihood?

I have read that 13s were "normal" gauge back then, which makes sense to me. I guess 12's could also be a possibility, but... I'll bet they were 13s. 99% of the guys were just doing Freddie Green style rhythm, CC of course (as well as a few others) did some other stuff, even with a bend here or there... maybe down to 12s? Especially after the amplifier came into the picture?

Hey Johnathan- what gauges do you have on your 125s/150s?

[Ozymandias]

Only a bit to do with strings but I found this interview with Ray Crawford a bit of an eye-opener.

The Coda interview with Ray Crawford | 1980 – Mark Weber

Especially interesting when he says that players like Christian, Reinhardt, (and himself) used to regularly play out of tune because they couldn't afford to replace old strings and their guitars and tuning pegs weren't good enough. I had somehow always imagined this a golden age when players with huge ears played impeccably in tune without any need for electronic assistance. Apparently not so.

Ray was one of the first jazz players who really caught my ear, with his beautiful solo on Tom Waits's "Blue Valentine".

[Doctor Jeff]

Replace strings? I replace them when they break. Seriously. I don’t go for a bright tone and haven’t replaced strings since I put a TI set on my 135 about 2 years ago. So I guess I’m just emulating the greats.

Great info—love the history of our instrument, jazz and music in general. You can only see the way forward by looking at what came before (historian’s credo).

Charlie died of TB at a very young age (25). The first TB drugs came out in the mid-40’s—he died in 1942. It is interesting to speculate that if he had been born 10 years later he might have been treated and survived.

There is little doubt that his “hectic” lifestyle didn’t help him in his fight against pulmonary TB. The regimen at that time was strict bedrest, then gradually increasing activity. People stayed in the TB San for 6-24 months at a time. Often they would have one or the other lung collapsed (temporarily) to assist with halting disease activity.

Interesting article on the sanitarium regimen at that time:

Tuberculosis sanatorium regimen in the 1940s: a patient's personal diary

An article on the introduction of TB drugs:

History of TB drugs - PAS, Streptomycin & Waksman

[princeplanet]

...
There is little doubt that his “hectic” lifestyle didn’t help him in his fight against pulmonary TB....

He was partial to the odd jazz cigarette, I hear ...

[Littlemark]

I'm pretty sure few played guitar strings.

[Litterick]

It seems Dur-A-Glo flatwound strings were advertised in the 1940 Montogomery Ward Catalogue, on page 555; I have seen only a record, not the advertisement itself.

The 1942 Catalogue includes an endorsement from a band leader: 'Herbie Kay says, "More umph needed? Then use Dur-a-Glo strings. They're actually alive!" New Type Flat Winding with very hard metal on steel core means less polishing, hence more resiliency, more sustained tone and 2 to 3 times longer wear. Easy on frets and fingers (page 716). I think they had plain B and top E strings, but I am not sure.

Thus, flatwound strings were available in the last two years of Charlie Christian's life. Whether he used them is another matter.

[Durban]

the first gibson "charlie christian pickup" was designed for a wound b!!! so that is an indication of the thickness of the strings he used!!

cheers

A wound B are not heavy as the inner core is thin, and A LOT less tension than a plain B

i bought a 5 pack Da Darrio .17 B wound
they are pretty lightweight and break very easily even whist tuning, (i Never ever break strings, playing)

tone is not that great, volume is fair bit softer, IMO not great at all

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

A wound B are not heavy as the inner core is thin, and A LOT less tension than a plain B

i bought a 5 pack Da Darrio .17 B wound
they are pretty lightweight and break very easily even whist tuning, (i Never ever break strings, playing)

tone is not that great, volume is fair bit softer, IMO not great at all

I assume you are referring to D'Addario. What set of theirs has a wound B?

[nopedals]

I used to boil strings in the 70s. As I recall, they sounded like new when reinstalled. I was poverty stricken with no Internet to tell me it was a bad idea.