I own a bunch of guitars and prefer different brands and type of strings for rock vs. jazz.? My preferred rock strings are GHS Boomers. Have them on my Les Paul, Strat and Tele. They feel good and sound great. The fundamental notes have presence and heft. Have you tried the GHS Brite Flats? If yes, what's your opinion?

But I'm thinking about changing strings on my Peerless ES-175 clone because I don't like the feel of the D'Addario 11-50 XL's.? They feel stiff and too tight, hard to play.? I'm not a note bender yet the D'Addario strings seem to cramp my hands and creativity.? I even tried the D'Addario NYXL.? Didn't like those either.

So what's your preferred jazz guitar string when you're trying for a Wes Montgomery vibe?

Tom Samarati wrote:

But I'm thinking about changing strings on my Peerless ES-175 clone because I don't like the feel of the D'Addario 11-50 XL's.? They feel stiff and too tight, hard to play.? I'm not a note bender yet the D'Addario strings seem to cramp my hands and creativity.? I even tried the D'Addario NYXL.? Didn't like those either.

Like yourself, I've not gotten good results with the D'Addario strings I've tried on my archtop guitars. I was definitely motivated to get them to work, because they work great on my solid body instruments, and they're generally inexpensive. I tried a set of their half rounds and left them on the guitar less than a week.

Although I played flats for several years back in the day, I've only used round wound strings on my archtops in recent years. My go-to strings have been Thomastik-Infeld Bebops since ca. 2010. I've tried their .012" and .013" sets and prefer the heavier ones. They play much lighter than their gauge would suggest, and the plain strings have a coating that makes their tone a much better match for the tone of the wound strings. The downside is their cost, but they last several times as long as any other string I've tried, which makes the added cost close to a wash.


Jay

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Thomastik, BB113 for rounds and GR112 for flats. Very expensive but worth it, Best price I have found on these strings

I play mostly chord/melody solo gigs (pre-pandemic of course):? with a dark/clean tone -no pick. So that's a lot of grabbing full handfuls for 2 hours and perhaps too much use of a lot of using partial or full bar grips. When I do a gig with a Bass player wow my hands like they did nothing after 2 hours. I have settled in on the Thomastic Jazz Swing Series pure nickel flat wounds??010, .014, .018, .023, .033, .044.? I sub a generic .011 for the 10. The lower stings are quite light and my hands are thankful. If I was more of an ensemble player I would probably go heavier. If I keep them and my hands clean they last about 3 months before getting noticeably?dull. That 2-3 hours playing per day.

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Peter Crist

Tom Samarati via groups.io wrote:

I've not sampled the Thomastik strings because of their price. The George Benson flat wound set at MSRP $74 and Sweetwater discount price of $41 does make me gasp.

That would be a dealbreaker for me. I pay ca. $20 for a set of T-I Bebop .013s.

Jay

Tom Samarati via groups.io wrote:

Here's the Sweetwater listing for the Be-Bop's. Thomastik-Infeld Jazz BeBop Round Wound Electric Guitar Strings - Medium-Light .013-.053

No surprise there. IME Sweetwater's prices are never the best. Here's a link to the vendor where I purchased my most recent set:



They were having a sale when I bought them, but I'd willingly pay the current $25 (US, not Canadian) if that were the best price available. Note the availability of flats in the same gauge. I've still got a set of those on my 1950 ES150.

I just found a set of .012" T-I flats on Amazon for $23.

Jay

One more remark re: flats vs. rounds. My experience with flats has consistently been that the plain strings sound noticeably brighter than the wound ones. The coating on the plain strings in T-I sets mitigates that somewhat, but I still find it distracting; tone settings that work well for me with the wound strings are too bright for the plain ones. The issue is much less apparent with wound strings. I've tried to develop my technique so as not to excite string noise with them, and I can live with what remains.

FWIW, I don't ever use T-I strings on my solid body instruments. Those get D'Addarios.

Jay

I wrote:

The issue is much less apparent with wound strings.

Should have been "with round wound strings."


Jay

Hi Juan,
Try pricing the newly remade catgut strings for classic guitar. And they only last around an hour!

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Hi Juan.
I would imagine flat wounds on a nylon string? Godin to be effective, as
so many are using the Godins to drive synth modules and patches, and
flats would probably track better. I'm a dinosaur, still using AXON and
hex-pickups for that, so I am totally unqualified to contribute anything
of experiential value to that conversation.

But the catgut strings sound great. If you have the Segovia EMI
recordings, you have him on catgut strings. After Segovia got the first
nylon strings from Augustine (designed by DuPont and marketed by La
Bella), all bets were off for catgut because of the war - the Germans
had the gut, and the Japanese had the silk (the basses were silk and
steel). Segovia instantly fell in love with the enhanced brightness and
longevity of nylon.

But the warmth of gut was remembered, and owners of old, very
collectable guitars wanted that back. The formulas and records were not
published and never kept, and so were lost. It wasn't until a few
decades ago that some began to try to reverse engineer the old gut
strings. The very nice folks at Aquila Strings were the most successful.
I spoke with them at the time, and they hadn't as yet solved the
problems of high cost and short string life. Maybe they have by now.

I lost interest, though, because Augustine finally cleaned up their act
with their basses, and I still love and use D'Addario trebles. While I
have my doubts about gut for use on a guitar which drives synth sounds,
they may well be worth? a try for you. Or perhaps their Nylgut strings
would fit the bill. If you're feeling 'gutsy' (pun intended), you can
find them here -

Anyway, I hope you're doing great also. I send you & yours all best wishes.

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One more item that IMO is worthy of note: when discussing preferred string brands/gauges, types, it really matters what type of instrument you're talkng about. Strings that work beautifully on an archtop cannot be relied upon to work equally well on a solidbody or semihollow instrument. Nor can results you get with one type of string from a given manufacturer be expected to hold with strings of a different type that they make.

I periodically restring one of my archtops with strings other than T-I, in the hope that I can identify a cheaper string that works for me. So far, I haven't found any, but I still look from time to time.

Jay

Fer sure! The T-I set? I espoused I only use on my ES-335 which I spend 95% of my time with.
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Peter Crist