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I've been using D'Addario 12-51 Pure Nickel guitar strings on my '66 Gibson ES125 TC for over a year. I average about 20 hours play time before the trebles begin to loose intonation. I use Dunlop 65 string cleaner/conditioner after every session. Does anyone else record their play time on strings? If so, what strings do you use and what is the average play time? Play live . . . Marinero
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03-10-2021 11:37 AM
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That seems like a pretty long life for pure nickel! I like to change my rounds every few months, and stretch my TI flats for a loooooong time. Just put a new pair on one archtop, but the ones on my Benedetto are over a year old
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I have no idea the hours on the set but I have strings that at times have gone 2 years before replacing and they still intonated ok. The number of hours would be way more than 20. Flatwounds can easily last me a year. I use the pure nickel and they just keep working way beyond your time span. Could be the breakdown from playing different that I do. I use a pick and play fingerstyle.
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Originally Posted by deacon Mark
Hi, D,
Thanks for your reply. I also use pick/fingerstyle for JG. I think my playing style would be considered "aggressive" in that I'm continually experimenting with dynamics in lieu of an unvarying dynamic style. However, I also have about the same play time for my CG strings using D'Addario EJ46 HT strings--again with as much dynamic diversity as appropriate. My problem is that I find it very annoying to continually tune after short play times when the strings are degrading. I'm very interested in what others experience with their choice of strings. Play live . . . Marinero
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When I gigged regulary I changed the strings (D’addario nickels) after two shows. Long show, sweating player, heavy right hand.
Now I play more home and I the D’addarios feel old after two weeks – even if I don’t play a lot. I like to have the guitar on the stand or on the wall and the dust and corrosion eats them there sooner than if I put them in the case.
So I changed to Elixir Nanowebs. At first they felt a bit plasticky and had some extra zing in their sound but I don’t hear it anymore. My hearing has gone worse or the strings have developed better.
Now they last about 3-6 months. Flats (TI Swings) about a year.
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interesting takes. for me I'm usually starting to feel/hear it after about four gigs if I keep them clean in between jobs, these were round wound nickel plated 13-56. then I'd swap out the top 3 strings for a couple more gigs if the wound G was starting to get some fret groove on the back. at this point a whole new set goes on.
well, this was my old routine until recently when I had to switch brands as the old company closed and my old stock ran out. now I'm using pure nickels and only swap out the plain B and E before a full change as the wound G is too expensive individually, might as well put a new set on every time.
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Hmm... I think I am a bit of an exception here.... I hardly ever change the Thomastiks Swings .012s on my ES-125 (my main guitar). Only the high E and the B get changed (I buy single Pyramids for that) when they lose intonation. When I gigged every week that was after about 4-6 months. I think the wound strings have been on there for about 2 years or so.... maybe even longer.
But apparently you can just leave 'm on for 7 years without problems:
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I find about 30hrs does it for strings. I play at least half the time acoustically, and feel like they lose their response around that time.
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Originally Posted by wintermoon
Hi, W,
Yes. The issue is with the trebles as the wound basses have greater overall longevity and response. I also use pure nickels, 12-51, and I had been thinking of replacing the trebles, as you've mentioned, to see how many more hours the strings will survive before losing the "sound." Do you have any idea how much extra time you buy with this approach? In the past, I experimented with my Classical guitars and found that changing the trebles only worked if you were satisfied with a diminished bass response(projection) and a more rounded tonality shortly after a 20 hour treble change. And, for those who play 3 plus hours a day, string changes(20-22 hours) on EG are every week and, irrespective if we're gigging or not, there's the personal problem ,for some, that frequent intonation and diminished sound are not acceptable. I suppose there's a caveat for EG players in that one's sound can be tweaked through the amplifier but for those of us who play archtops it seems counter-productive. I own a LoPrinzi Spanish Grand Concert CG and Augie reminded me when I bought the guitar over 20 years ago about the importance of string changes on an acoustic instrument in relation to overall sound. I don't know why it would be different for a quality acoustic EG. Thanks for your reply.
Play live . . . Marinero
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Hi, LJ, Originally Posted by Little Jay
Thanks for the video. I wonder, however, how the instruments would sound unamplified? As I mentioned to Wintermoon, an amplifier has the ability to tweak your electric sound but I don't believe the sound would be the same when played acoustically and this was also mentioned in the video. So, does it really matter for an EG or is there some overall effect to the acoustic instrument as luthier LoPrinzi remarked? Also, I would think he would be constantly tweaking those 7 year old strings--a real annoyance when you're gigging.
Play live . . . Marinero
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That's amazing, I couldn't hear a difference between the old and new strings. Originally Posted by Little Jay
I'm also of the camp who doesn't change strings very often. One reason is that I don't like the sound of new strings. It's too zingy, even with flatwounds. Strings have to be played for a few hours before they even begin to sound ok.
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I not big on brand new strings. They sound much better after they have about 3-4 hours of playing on them and sit for a few days. Strings even when we stretch them out new will still continue to stretch for a bit. Flatwounds would be an exception they sound good usually right away.
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I have a powerful right hand and corrosive sweat. I change the unwound strings once or twice before changing the whole set and often change the G string and sometimes even the D string along with the unwounds if they are showing fret groove. 20 hours on the unwound strings sounds about right.
I use pure nickel flats on my archtops (TI Swings, 11's on the long scales and 12's on the short scales), pure nickel rounds on my solidbodies (DR Pure Blues 10's), silvered strings on my gypsy guitars (Argentine 10'S), phosphor bronze on my flattop (Martin 11's) and nylon strings on my classical (Savarez).
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May I suggest that you try a set or two of S.I.T.s? The initials stand for Stay In Tune: which they do. They come in all sizes and types, and usually come with extra E and B strings. They are wound on a hex core and the wrap wire is glued to the core. They are marginally less bright when brand new than other strings; they sound pre-broken in. And then they maintain that same exact tone for a long, long time. I, too, play(ed) with a lot of dynamics, and was well-satisfied with the over-all tone, the dynamic range, and the extended useful life of the strings. Seriously, these are pro-level tools.
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Originally Posted by citizenk74
Thanks, C,
I just checked out the S.I.T. Pure Nickel 12-52's online and they are comparable in price to the D'Addario's. I'm going to replace my first three strings today with some Ernie Ball 12, 16, 32W's I found in stock at the local Guitar Center for an experiment with my trebles and I'll see if they have the S.I.T's for my next string change after the experiment. Thanks for the reference!
Play live . . . Marinero
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Many years ago I saw a guitarist change strings on stage, both his guitars, immediately before his performance. Somehow, his strings sounded fine, holding tune, and the weird thing was he did not pull on the strings to stretch them. This was a first order mystery to me for a long time until someone suggested that he must have stretched them not by pulling on them, but by deliberately tuning up to higher than standard pitch and then tuning back down to standard. It is the only thing that makes sense... but recalling that as I read this thread, I think there is another advantage to doing that; the migration of pull-stretched "ghost kink" artifacts from the sounding string length in front of the bridge to behind the bridge out of harm"s way.
The first stage of life for a string is the relatively short period of a few days after it has been put on the guitar. This period is often characterized variously as zingy, bright, unstable, or unusable. This is because the strings are experiencing tension to pitch for the first time, are beginning to stretch and lengthen a little, and are making "soft" slightly rounded angles over the bridge and nut.
If you just tune them to pitch and "play them in" you will need to re-tune them numerous times until enough elasticity is removed from the strings that they stabilize and hold tension, no longer continue to stretch and lengthen, and change their break angles over the bridge from soft rounded angles to sharp hard angles.
If you are impatient and commence to pull the extra stretch out of the strings as soon as they are put on the guitar, some bad things happen. A lot of people do this anyway because they are eager to immediately adjust intonation and shorten the playing in period.
We all know that grime accumulating in wound strings, corrosion, fret notches under the strings, and other things eventually cause tone and intonation troubles, but what about things that might happen immediately to cause troubles?
What happens when you stretch immediately? You force the soft break angles to become hard break angles prematurely - before you have set intonation. The mechanics of stretching before intonation is that you have pulled the string above pitch, displaced the string over the bridge toward the neck end of the guitar, but set the hard break angle in the string at the point it goes over the bridge while the string itself is being maximally lengthened. When you then take up the slack by re-tuning, that hard break angle is moved from over the bridge to slightly before it with a new soft angle behind it now over the bridge. If you repeat this a few times until things are stable, you will have created a series of anomalies in the new string right in front of the bridge, each being the remnant of a hard break angle having been not quite straightened out.
Now these "ghost kinks" are very small and very close to the bridge, but the termination of a sounding string length is very important. The harmonics travel along the sounding string length and reflect off their termination at the bridge, and ghost kinks can interfere with this. With multiple ghost kinks, the reflections happening thousands of times per second, and suffering the kinks twice for a reflection (both directions), the ghost kinks' effects while tiny for a single pass will accrue for the duration of the note played.
So, is their a way to stretch the strings before putting them on the guitar? Not really, but there might be a way to stretch them on the guitar in a way that avoids ultimately placing the ghost kinks in front of the bridge. Consider what happens to a guitar that has had these ghost kinks produced at standard tuning, but then you re-tune the guitar down to below standard. Does this make the strings' ghost kinks move out of the sounding string length back to behind the bridge? Do so many people "prefer the sound" of a tuned down guitar because they have incidentally migrated the little ghost kink string anomalies to behind the bridge?
Now one wonders... what if we pretended that we were going to string the guitar and tune it up above standard pitch from the beginning, then stabilize the strings by stretching at this elevated pitch and tension, and so create the ghost kinks in front of the bridge... but then, tune down to standard pitch, moving the ghost kinks to behind the bridge out of the sounding string lengths, and then doing intonation with nice ghost kink free strings?
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Wow, 20 hours! I would be profoundly annoyed with that; it would mean changing strings every two weeks or less. Since I don't like the new string sound most of the time (there is one exception that I'll get to), I don't like changing strings. I generally find keeping new strings in tune to be much more difficult than old strings. Intonation does eventually seem to worsen (by which I mean comparing the octave harmonic to the same string fretted at the 12th fret). When I am using D'Addario branded strings, for some reason I just don't like those rascals. D'Addarios usually get swapped out for something else within a couple of days. They're just too damn jangly.
I go hundreds of hours between string changes whether steel string or classical. One possibility is my tin ears. Another possibility is different body chemistry; my hands tend to be dry and I never wipe the strings down or anything like that after playing. I just put the guitar back on its stand or back in the case. Some people's sweat/skin oils just seem to eat through strings really quickly. And some people are allergic to nickel.
The exception for new strings is SIT brand strings. I find that they stabilize and hold a tune very quickly like the package says; string them up, stretch and re-tune three or four times, and they're good to go. I don't know what is actually different about those strings but it is noticeably better. Also, the wound strings are nowhere near as jangly as D'Addarios; even the D'Addario pure nickel strings are jangly-er than the SITs. And I find that SITs last a long time; six months between string changes is not unusual. For a five dollar pack of strings that's pretty good. I've been using the S1150 set on my solidbodies and my archtops quite happily for a couple of years now.
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I have a couple friends that only change them when they break.
seriously!
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Im a long time Thomastik player. My favorites on big archtops are the swing 13 set. They last about a good year if you keep them clean after playing (fast fret). They remain VERY consistent in tone over time. I nearly tried all the flatwounds on the market and the Thomastik swing set last the longest of them all. The benson set is not long lasting at all. 5-6 months in and they are dead. Dadarrio Chromes do last a bit longer then them bensons but they go from super bright to muffled rather quick. Nothing beats Thomastik. And oh, my playing time equals about all the time.
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Originally Posted by Cunamara
Hi, C,
I have been involved in these manic evaluations on my Classical guitars for well over 30 years. It began when I seriously started listening to live Classical guitarists and personally evaluating my perception of their sound. And, I began to realize that sound, IMO, is a byproduct of personality, choice/quality of instrument, and type, strength, and freshness of strings used. I play exclusively Cedar top CG's and since the nature of the wood produces a rounder overall sound(less brilliant/defined than Spruce), the freshness of the strings is paramount to allowing the instrument to sing naturally. So, the 20 hour life span(plus or minus a few hours) was overt and obvious to my ears. And, a little over a year ago, I pulled my '66 Gibson ES125TC from its secure, humidified resting place after a 40 year hiatus and began my quest to discover its nature. And, what did I find after considerable string experimentation? The 20 hour rule reared its ugly head and in exactly the same way it did on my CG's: the EG trebles lost clarity, became dull and lost intonation; however, the basses showed marginally less depth(perhaps a more rounded sound) but not as much as my CG's. So, today I took Wintermoon's suggestion and did a string change on the trebles with a nickel round third and immediately, the sound difference from the old trebles was profound. And, I didn't find any real glaring disparity in sound between the basses and new trebles compared to the fresh set. So, I'll see how long the sound lasts before another full string change is necessary. And, this tactic was never possible on my CG's where the entire set of strings lost their voice at +/- 20 hours.
Finally, as musicians, we are conjurers of sound and to ignore its importance or give it less focus than technique, IMO, is ignoring the total animus and personality of a musician and his music. I believe that ,sometimes, EG players place too much focus on their amps for tonal control at the expense of discovering the nature of their instruments and the sound that represents our musical nature. My next experiment will be Citizenk74's S.I.T's in comparison to my D'Addario EPN21's Pure Nickel. I hope others will join in this conversation since it is really true: An old dog CAN learn new tricks! . . . and I think I'm not the only old barker here!
Play live . . . Marinero
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Marinero, I think you make a good point about electric versus acoustic playing. To my ears, an acoustic instrument (at least a good one) reveals more of the tonal spectrum of the string than an amplified instrument does. It seems like a pickup only reproduces a slice of the information being created by a vibrating string. I prefer to play acoustically rather than electrically whenever possible and I think it's because of that; somehow acoustically it feels more personal. The only thing I can change to shift the sound is how I address the instrument. That said, I still prefer a darker and warmer tone and new strings often don't provide that to my ears. And I would still hate changing strings that often no matter what.
I have never owned or played a really good classical guitar. They are a very different beast than steel string instruments. Well, I should correct that; I did play Gene Bertoncini's Buscarino Grand Cabaret for a few minutes, but that instrument is voiced more for jazz rather than classical. And Gene uses flat wound classical guitar strings so that is different as well. My current classical guitar is a Takamine electric acoustic (EC-132C) so really no comparison whatsoever to a good acoustic instrument.
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Hi, Citizen74, Originally Posted by Marinero
An update: I changed the D'Addario trebles on my ES125TC after 21 hours play time with the above Cheapo EB strings and the sound was immediately noticeable and they settled in quickly with good intonation. I now have six hours on the trebles. The basses have still retained their punch and show no noticeable wear. For many years, however, I tried this with my Classical guitars but the basses were muddy and they were physically degraded. I'll follow up after another 14 hours to see if this works for me. I hope this is helpful to some on this Forum.
Play live . . . Marinero
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