Advise on frequency changing flat wound strings

[Litterick]

You can make you stings last longer. Wash your hands before playing; clean your strings after playing. If your sweat corrodes strings, probably you are not eating enough fruit and vegetables.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

Although it’s also protection against corrosion, I think plating is done more for lubricity than hardness. Tin, indium, and a few other relatively soft metals are commonly plated as surface lubricants. I assume gold has a similar effect, but I couldn’t find any info on that use.

The plating layer is very thin, and it’s held to the base metal by ionic bonds. It doesn’t wear down as easily as a thicker layer would because it’s more difficult to pull the thin layer off the base than it is to wear off the surface of a thicker layer of soft metal. The bonds to the base are stronger than the intermolecular bonds within the plating material.

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

1. Thank you very much for that information! Then it is corrosion rather than mechanical wear that "wipes out" these plain strings. Would that be correct?

I don’t know how to answer that. It depends on what you mean by “wipes out”. Not all oxidation is bad - it’s largely dependent on the specific metal(s). Some is protective and some is destructive. Some oxides have more mass than others, and I’m sure there are differences in mechanical properties that could affect tone and playability (eg smoothness of feel).

Plain strings suffer from many failings. They oxidize. They become brittle from continued flexion, through a process called work hardening. This is why a coat hanger breaks if you bend it back and forth at the same point. And if the string is bent over a hard, relatively sharp edge like the back of a TOM bridge, the baseplate of a body-through bridge/TP, a sharp rim on a tuning peg hole, a rough spot or a burr, the microflexion at that point of contact becomes a stress riser in the string that probably affects tone and intonation before its inevitable breakage at that spot. Cheap or poorly chosen / designed / finished / installed hardware is a common cause of broken strings.

If you mean lose its tone, I don’t think anyone knows for sure what causes this. Remember that a string on a guitar is basically the spring in an oscillating system. Oxidation can alter the characteristics of a spring, as can any change in its shape. Strings are inelastic in many ways, so they deform from tension, vibration, plucking etc. Both tone and intonation depend on uniformity of the thickness of a string throughout its length. Because the metal is not perfectly and consistently dense, constant pulling and vibration elongate it and cause irregularities in cross sectional shape and diameter. Even progressive microscopic variation in diameter and deviation from perfect roundness probably affect tone, longevity, and integrity of plain strings much more than wound ones.

[Doctor Jeff]

You can leave TI flats on for years if you look after them

I posted before that when I got a set of TI Jazz a few years ago they got some surface tarnish very quickly. I cleaned them with alcohol, and they have remained tarnish free for a couple of years.

I could change them out I guess, but why? I am not looking for a bright sound. They are warm and mellow and stay in tune.

[Christian Miller]

The longer they stay on, the greater the thunk

[mr quick]

OP, if you like a lively sound but still want to play flatwounds, you should try La Bellas next time
However, don't be afraid of trying round wound strings.

Like others have said, flats really do last longer. A big problem for your bronze strings is that sweat and grime get stuck in the ridges of the wound strings. I can only assume that the sweat being stuck between alloys like that accelerates the deterioration of the string. Some manufacturers attempt to remedy this by various variations of the same principle, coating the string with a thin film. If you want a really lively roundwound string, try out the brand new D'Addario XS strings.

If you like the dullness (or as we say here, "thunk") of a flatwound, give all the major brands a try. I thought the differences the flatwound strings supposedly would have were greatly exaggerated, but I was wrong.