What strings are these?

[RJVB]

these came on my LH-650:



They look like roundwound 80/20 silk-and steel strings and the grey-green headers suggest Thomastik? But apparentlythey sounded good via the pickup which suggests they're not brass-wounds?!

[burchyk]

Looks like Thomastiks to me

[RJVB]

Yeah, to me too, but which kind?

They were old enough that the plain strings were corroded and the E string had become so brittle that it broke of itself when I was using it to extend a replacement string I was putting on (*). An old reference maybe? The combination round-wound + silk-and-steel + possibly brass doesn't seem to match anything in their current catalog.

BTW, does chrome or nickel plating turn goldish over time?

*) I'd taken a hardly used but broken in set of Earthwood Silk & Steel to put on the Loar, and realised very quickly that I had forgotten that I cut my steel strings these days. Fortunately leaving a certain amount sticking out, so I had to extend only the A and E1 strings. Turns out that's easy enough, if you have old trebles with the ball end still attached.

[gitman]

Highly doubtful that it's a silk+steel type - to me these look like normal TI (nickel) round wound strings with the typical green wrapper at the end.

[RJVB]

Look at the places where the green headers are damaged; there's clearly a layer of silvery silk/nylon under the wrapping.

Thomastik have other strings that have undocumented nylon under the winding. So is that a pure nickel-wrap, or plated? Nickel isn't brass-coloured of itself, is it?

[docsteve]

Seems like two different kinds - one string has a silk-wound ball end, the others are plain. I‘ve played Thomastiks for over ten years and they always had silk-wound ball ends. Possibly your strings are even older than that?

And to the best of my knowledge nickel doesn’t go yellow over the years.


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[nevershouldhavesoldit]

But apparently they sounded good via the pickup which suggests they're not brass-wounds?!

I always thought that too. But I wanted to see how my Eastman 810CE7 sounded with acoustic strings, so I put on a set of John Pearse 80/20s over a nickel wound 7th. The steel core in the 80/20s is ferrous enough to generate a decent signal from the pickup, and it actually sounds really good. The output from E1, B and A0 is a bit higher than it is from the rest - but it's a mild imbalance that's fixable if you have adjustable polepieces. And, of course, the overall output level is lower than it would be with strings that have a higher ferromagnetic content.

I don't know if there'd be enough output from a single coil, and I suspect that the imbalance would be worse with a high output humbucker and/or on a gig requiring higher volume. But with a single floating neck PU, my archtop would be fine with the 80/20s on an amplified solo or small group gig. And it sounds fantastic unplugged.

[RJVB]

Seems like two different kinds - one string has a silk-wound ball end, the others are plain.

Hah, good eyes, even I hadn't noticed that yet. The one with the silked ball-end doesn't have any damage that shows whether or not there's silk underneath. I'm going to pry at the winding of each to see what's underneath.

These were on a Loar LH-650, of which I know next to nothing in terms of history. It's lacking the case, has a replacement fingerrest and clearly never had a proper set-up (or by someone who like the strings lying high in the nut). Frets are almost pristine too. The serial number suggests it's a late production instrument. I suppose that could help date the string age.

It's got the standard KA floating pickup btw, which seems to have adjustable poles.

[AllanAllen]

Can you give more detail on extending the strings?

[RJVB]

So the (G) string with the 2 silked ends doesn't show any evidence of having silk or nylon under it's wrapping. The others all do. Those also have a "torsaded" aspect to the green-silked header which the G string doesn't seem to have.
They're all clearly brass, having seem them under better light, and have a core that appears to be brass-coated too.
The green silk on the G string is exactly the same colour as that on the other strings.

[RJVB]

Can you give more detail on extending the strings?

I just treaded a plain wire treble through the "ball" of the string to be extented, pulled it through until I had the length I wanted to extend over left until that string's ball-end, and then wound the other part of the wire along the extension. To finish I pull the string through its own ball-end and cut it.

[RJVB]

Well, I received the answer in the mail today...

They're Thomastik Plectrum AC112! The AC111s have red silk wrapping, the 12s this colour green. And so the old strings were indeed brass, and silk-and-steel design. The G string with its two silked ends was not an alien; I guess the silked ball end indicates that it's flat-wound.
I thought the AC111 has flat-wound G, D and A strings; in the AC112 only the G is flat-wound.

The guitar seems to love these strings more than the comparable-tension Earthwood silk-and-steels, or maybe it's just the fact these are new and the Earthwoods had already been on a flattop. Interestingly the newness twang annoys me less with this heaver version on an archtop than it did with the AC111s on the jumbo.