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As always, so many thoughtful and interesting replies! As I have been saying, I am new to serious guitar study and performing. My years as a folk singer always involved bronze strings which I'd change monthly, but always 2 days before serious shows. I saw a Philly connection in this thread, I used to play at a great folk venue called the Main Point outside of Philly. Did shows with Sonny Terry/McGee and Randy Newman there. New strings please for that kind of gig. I was playing or gigging every day. This changed when the elixir polyweb strings came to my attention, and they definitely keep their tone much longer. For rock and blues I've played a wonderful 1986 PRS Custom 24 that I stumbled on in 1986 shopping for a synth and saw it hanging, was curious, played it for 10 minutes and bought it! Years later Paul was in that store and my guitar was in my car, when he saw it he said "if you ever sell it, call me first". I really don't know why but I think the pickups were wound tighter in the first year. I play La Bella "Benders", nickel, 0.9s on it. I have a Strat I just put 0.8s on and it's great. I never considered 8s till I saw a Beato You Tube on using them. So, I'm set with my string choices for my acoustics and these electrics. What's new, as in 6 months new, is playing jazz guitar. (Really to support my singing, mostly original songs. My voice is my main instrument. So far heaven't had to change out the vocal cords.) On the telecaster I got for jazz, I really like the TI 12 swings. When I put a new set on it's not just hearing a brighter tone, I hear a fuller harmonic resonance in all of the strings, especially the bottom 4. My Trenier came with these strings and sounded great but I am experimenting with different possibilities hoping to settle on one. The 14 Jazz tapes are dark and especially rich in the bass strings which I really like as I do a lot of walking bass. (I am primarily a piano player and that carries over to guitar). Partly because of the hassle with the silk fitting my tailpiece but mostly to hear for myself I ordered a TI Bebop 13 set. One reason this might prove a good fit is when I perform I still sing many of my older folk/country tunes and I want to stay on one guitar as much as possible. The rounds may give more of an acoustic guitar punch, but maybe not work as well for jazz. With the "flat tone" on the tele, it might be good to have a "round tone" on the Trenier. But....I really like the tapes. I've learned a lot from you all on this thread and greatly appreciate it. For instance I'll be "really cleaning' strings that I want to keep up for longer periods of time. Thanks again.....Peter
Last edited by Woodstove; 08-09-2023 at 01:16 PM.
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08-09-2023 09:42 AM
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Yes exactly. More harmonic information. Less emphasis on the fundamental. So roundwounds do not sound as good as a quality set of flats when it comes to rhythm work. Flatwounds sit in the mix better. That is my long time experience after going back and forth many times. It's like comparing a jazz bass to a P-bass. If you don't know what I'm referencing as the preferred instrument for sitting in a mix then there is little to discuss. One of them generally sticks out like a sore thumb if you A/B them.
Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Is it important? Not at all, but this is a guitar forum so we need to split hairs sometimes.
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tone isn't "one size fits all".
And there are a lot of factors that come into play. My favorite flatwound tone is Joe Pass Joy Spring.
And that tone came from a 175 with dead flatwounds. If you want that tone, you need to have dead strings. It helps if you smoke cigarettes, eat a lot of fried chicken and play without washing your hands.
But seriously, nothing wrong with the sound of new strings. I like it on my solid bodies, dislike it on my archtops though I'd love to have one archtop setup with rounds just for variation...
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i play bass too, and was gigging a ton on it before covid...all i used was a p-bass i built from parts (MJT finished) with TI flats. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
was at a rehearsal one night, and somehow my A broke. i stopped the song, all the other guys were joking around..."i didnt even know you could break a bass string!"...i mustve looked like someone ran over my dog because the next question was "you ok?" i wasn't gonna cry or anything...but those were a perfectly seasoned, five year old set of awesome sounding flats, the only strings that had actually been on that bass, been thru countless gigs and rehearsals and practice sessions...and they were gone just like that. and then i was faced with the prospect of a month+ of having to break new ones in.
the labellas i replaced them with were great sounding too once they got seasoned...but the tension was too much when i was splitting time with guitar and not in bass shape.
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Thanks Jack, such a great track! That sound gives the guitar its own space. The lack of harmonics separates it distinctively from the piano. I think that has a lot to do with why the "dead flat wound" sound has established itself so deeply for this type of music.
By the way I've been meaning to join in your wonderful and helpful mental health threads. I left the music biz in 1978 (another conversation) and became an MD psychiatrist. My 40 year career has been all about integrating mental health care in medical settings as the experience you had after surgery is SO common. Treating depression (and others) not only is critical for quality of life, it always improves medical outcomes because the stress system is overactive and biologically does almost all the things to the body you don't want for health and recovery, such as inflammation, immune system dysregulation, major cardiovascular problems and much more. In the health care system I wish existed, you would have been offered treatment by a member of the team that cared for you as a routine component of your treatment plan. But enough for now!! I'll go over to your threads and continue this instead of highjacking my own thread! Meanwhile I'm back to music 98% of my time, doing some consulting and teaching to keep the flame burning but only 8 hours/week.Last edited by Woodstove; 08-09-2023 at 10:48 AM.
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Sparkle ? …. Zing ? !! Originally Posted by wintermoon;[URL="tel:1280116"
yikes not for me …. thankyou
old flats for me please
(i try to sound like a stand-up bass
an octave up , kinda)
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A while back, I was doing some mult-track recording and I didn't have a bass. So I played the bass parts on guitar and then used a plug-in to transpose them down an octave. Low and behold, the flats on my 175 ended up sounding like an upright bass... Originally Posted by pingu
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I used to use flatwounds, which last a long time. (They're dull to start with!) Mainly because I hate guitar squeaking.
But now I'm using Elixir Polywebs and like them fine. Don't know how long they will last me, though I've heard from others who regularly use them that they last a long time.
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hey, if you want to sound dull have at it! Originally Posted by pingu
and while you're at it, roll your treble off to zero....or just take up bass.
but seriously, whatever floats your dingy....
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You guys are funny with the 'ur wrong for liking rounds/flats'. They both sound good and serve different purposes. It's all preference.
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Who said anyone was wrong? Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
Misguided maybe, but certainly not wrong
It's all in fun man.....
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Yeah agree with wintermoon. Not saying you're wrong. I'm just saying that "different purpose" isn't one that appeals to my taste. To me that Joe Pass clip and any Tal Farlow clips sound like their guitars were made of soggy cardboard. But that soggy cardboard thing is that a lot of people refer to as "thunk". "Soggy cardboard" and "thunk" are just two different value judgments and two perspectives on the same phenomenon. Neither is wrong or right. Originally Posted by Jimmy Smith
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And I thought I was the only one here that thinks what's referred to as "thunk" sounds like someone threw a blanket over the guitar or forgot to remove their hand when palming the strings.
Different strokes I guess.....thunk away gentlemen!
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I just pick closer to the bridge if I need a little zing. Cuts right through.
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I tend to change them when the intonation gets off -- and, usually, I only need to change the E string. Eventually, some other strings will be off. At that point, it might be the string or the guitar, but the standard advice is that you first put on new strings before you adjust the saddles, or neck. So, whatever the problem, you still change the strings.
I also have noticed that the old strings are kinked where they touched the frets. It's hard for me to imagine that those kinks help the sound or the intonation, but, for all I know, they're there after the first hour on the new strings. I worry about it when chords in the upper register don't sound right.
I buy E and B strings by gauge in packs of 5 on line.
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Those kinks are the sign of a toasted string. I change the high E before every gig because one gig and it's all kinked up like that and is break prone. That's about 3 hours of heavy play time. I change the B and G every four or five gigs as they wind up kinked like that, just not as quickly. The wound flats last a couple months. I almost never break strings at a gig this way. Nothing worse than having to stop and change a string when you are trying to make that sweet moolah. And I'd rather not carry a 2nd guitar around. I buy a couple dozen high E's, B's, and G's at a time in long bags from just strings.com and they last me a good while. No affiliation, I just like the low cost generic no name plain strings they sell. Good string for the money. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Well, in my Bass Guitar case is the packet of my current string set. Judging by the youthful looking Mark King I guess it was last century when I changed them....
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The cats around you wanted me to express their thanks. Originally Posted by Jonah
Ahem.
I only change strings when they need to be changed. Which is: broken, tarnished, or too dull-sounding. I don’t like a bright sound at all, so if I can get the sound I like with the strings I’ve got I leave them on.
I have a variety of strings. The TI Jazzes on my 135 have been there, uh, a long time. Years. I have D’A flats on my 175 and have been meaning to change them since I got the guitar 2 years ago, but haven’t gotten around to it.
Classical strings often get dull pretty quickly, but I have a set of La Bellas I put on my Cordoba about 6-8 months ago, and they sound just fine to me.
It might “help” that I’ve lost a lot of my high-end hearing over the years…
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Who are you, Stevie Ray Vaughn? I have NEVER broken a string on a gig, in fact never while playing. Usually it’s just adjusting the tuning. Pretty rare. Originally Posted by DawgBone
But then I don’t bend them 3 notes either.
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I don't have Stevie's natural hand strength. I use 10-39 and tune down to Eb on a Gibson scale. It's blues, so I do lots of string bending. It's possible I can make a 2nd gig without changing that high E, but it's a risk and it will often break on the last few songs of the 2nd gig so I just change it before each show. I suppose if I used 12's or 13's and never bent a string things would be different. Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
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Between my regular 3 hour Sunday blues brunch and outside gigs as a sideman, I still play enough blues dates to stress my strings. And I played at least 10 a month from about 1980 until the early 2000s when most of the local blues clubs had closed down or changed their formats to "whatever fills the seats". I've learned that breaking strings is often (if not usually) caused by something on the guitar that can be fixed. A lot of string breakage happens at the exact same spot every time, and that's the key to the diagnosis.
My default blues guitar is the ratty '90s Epi LP7 that I've shown as an example of several things in various threads. It's a standard 24 3/4" scale with a fake TOM and a stop tailpiece, and I play it in standard tuning with 11, 13, and 17 plain strings up top. When I got it (new), it had "builder grade" hardware and a cheap nut - and it broke E1s after no more than 5 or 6 hours of play, always where the string enters the tuning post hole. It also broke B strings at the same place, but not as often and usually when I was in the process of changing them. The holes in the posts had very sharp edges. I got a set of Grover 12 string tuners off a closeout table and stuck 7 of them on it, which fixed the problem - and I don't think I've broken more than 3 or 4 E1s in the 25 or so years since then. I was amazed that the cheap bridge and tailpiece have been so good that they're still there and still working perfectly. I almost replaced them several times on the assumption that they're cheap metal and will undoubtedly start breaking strings, but so far so good after more than 25 years of hard use.
My Carvin also broke strings at the tuning post, but they were Sperzel lockers. Sperzels are very, very well made and I couldn't find any flaw at all. Both plain and wound strings were breaking. I finally figured out that I was ovetightening the locking screw and kinking the strings enough to cause them to fatigue and break. Once I learned to make them no more than finger tight and to check for looseness every time I played, I never broke another string.
My Raines Tele 7 (25 1/2" scale, Sperzel lockers, same strings and standard tuning) broke E1s from the day I got it. But they all broke inside the bridge/tailpiece, and I localized it to the point at which it contacted the edge of the baseplate hole through which the string passes on its way to the saddle. There was a burr in the metal and the edge of the hole was very rough. I deburred and chamfered all the holes, and the breakage stopped for several gigs but started to return. So I put a Hipshot bridge / TP on and it hasn't broken a string since.
So if you're regularly breaking strings at the exact same place(s), it may well be the guitar and not the strings. Strings stretch under tension, so the length of the broken piece may not be exactly the same as the distance between the ball and the point of injury. If you're having this problem, you may have to mark the string(s) in question with a permanent flourescent marker or a tiny dab of paint from a paint pen at the post or whatever piece of hardware is closest to the broken area. But if every string breaks at the same point, it's not the string and it's not you - it's the guitar.
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Sound advice and I would generally agree. However, metal does fatigue and will fail. Work hardening. I had a real problem with breakage at the saddle with strats. "Get graph-tech bridge pieces". I took that advice and nothing changed. And I hated the ping-y sound of those saddles. I switched to ES guitars in 2015 and had a lot less breakage issues but with heavy string bending they still can still be counted on to give way after 3 or 4 hours of hard gigging. Albert King and Stevie bends are hard on strings. Strangely the cheap-o juststrings.com generic plain gauges have generally outlasted ernie balls and d'addarios during the times when I didn't change them (long rehearsals but no gigs during covid). Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
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I put TI BeBop 13's on the Trenier. I've decided this is the set for this guitar (for now!). I have TI Swing 12's on the Tele and get a really nice more mellow jazz tone. I have Tapes on my Gibson L4C. For the Trenier I like the acoustic guitar vibe I get especially using it for my country/folk songs. But I also like jazz ballad comping tone. This is a song of mine just recorded (one take) to send to band members to learn. The guitar is all about supporting my singing and songwriting....
Our Vineyard Home
Dropbox - Our Vineyard Home.mp3 - Simplify your life
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Nice job! I enjoyed your singing voice. Originally Posted by Woodstove
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