DR Black Beauties strings coating flakes off

[Woody Sound]

I bought 2 sets of DR Black Beauties coated acoustic strings for an acoustic archtop. After just a few days the black coating started flaking off the plain high E & B, around the most used frets and the picking area. Interestingly, just the the plain strings. After a few more days it became horrible. Tiny black flakes coming off, leaving a noisy rough raspy feeling on my fingers, and a very harsh brittle tone with lots of buzzing. Unusable. So tried the second set. After a few days, same thing. So I swapped in two regular D'Addario plain strings, problem solved. No more harsh tone, buzzing, etc. I wrote to DR last week from their web site, no reply. See the upper left and bottome right below. You can even see some flakes that have fallen onto the paper.

[child as audience]

Coated DR's have always done that. Black Beauties, Red Devils, Neons. They're sticky too.
I also stick with D'Addario.

[SoftwareGuy]

Coated DR's have always done that. Black Beauties, Red Devils, Neons. They're sticky too.
I also stick with D'Addario.

My experience also. Personally I don't like coated strings, so D'Addario or Earnie Ball are my regular options.

[Woody Sound]

My experience also. Personally I don't like coated strings, so D'Addario or Earnie Ball are my regular options.

I liked the way they sounded until the high E & B self destructed. I might try them again and just swap in a plain E & B right away. Cheap enough.