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Old time strings vs what we have today?


Sailorofdarknes

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Watching the Jimi Hendrix videos in the other thread got me to thinking. How were the strings back then? Were they at all different, quality, tension, feel, materials? Are strings today made largely the same but with nicer manufacturing floors? Maybe some of the old timers here (Respectfully) could chime in.

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When I first started playing I would buy a set of strings and throw away the low "E'.

 

The "A" string became my low "E". All the other strings were shifted too.

 

A light guage banjo string was used for the high "E".

 

Ernie Ball changed all that.

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Jimi advertised Rotosounds for a while if I recall.

 

They were Ok but any set would lose the wound g outer really quickly.

 

I just took a set of 20 year olds off my acoustic and they still held tuning and intonation despite being a little woolly..............

 

and yes we have it really really good now in special sets, special materials, better manufacturing process and materials and so on.

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Talking to uncle Jack about strings is cool.

He has always used size 10 flatwounds on his teles and strats.

Partly for sound, partly for comfort. Many of his gigs started at 8pm and didn't end til 5am. He says he used the light flats just to keep from tearing up his fingers.

 

EG

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Interesting stuff here. So its safe to say that strings last longer now and are better quality. Would one venture to say that new strings of this era would make a vintage classic sound better? I sometimes when out to sea don't get to change my strings for months and the D'Adarios always hold up and sound great for quite a while. Would a vintage collector go so far as to track down a vintage set of strings to put on a guitar?

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In terms of available quality and variety, this is truly The Golden Age Of Strings ...

 

 

csm, you've been playing a long time.

 

What brands of strings did you use in your early years?

 

What was available on your side of the big pond?

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Gibson used to ship guitars with their Sonamatic Medium gauge strings 12/16/26/34/44/56.I used to buy these sets and exchange the 34 for a 10 they stayed in tune very welland were fairly balanced across the fingerboard. You can't even thread a 56 through a modern bridge.

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Back in the old days, you couldn't get "light" strings, I think the lightest gauge for electric guitars was 12s. A lot of the '60s blues players (like Jimmy Page) would substitute a banjo string for the High E and lose the 6th string in the set. The first "light" gauge strings to become available in England were Fender 10-38 sets (10-13-15-26-32-38 mm). People had to use those for a long time. Rory Gallagher, Albert Collins, and Jimi were users of those gauges.

 

I like the GHS Boomers LXL set, which are 10-38 gauge strings, I use them on my 25.5" scale guitars. I'm not too fond of Fender strings. I'm glad that GHS has a set like that available, so does Dean Markley.

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csm, you've been playing a long time.


What brands of strings did you use in your early years?


What was available on your side of the big pond?

 

 

Back in the late '70s, my band was 'auditioned' for a Rotosound endorsement. This meant that they gave us a bunch of strings to use on a tour just in case we ever got successful eough to make it worth their while to use us in ads. As it happened, we didn't ... but the strings barely lasted two gigs* per set. I then switched to Ernie's, which I've been (happily) using ever since. I've occasionally tried Rotos since ... and they still die and/or break unacceptably quickly.

 

In fairness to Rotosound, their bass strings are a great deal better ... my bass-playing ex-wife used them for almost fifteen years -- before switching to Maxima Golds, which cost more but retained tonal life a LOT longer.

 

*As an opening act, we were doing 40-minute sets ... which meant that a new pack of Rotos were good for less than an hour and a half of playing.

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re: Black Diamond... When I started playing, 1987ish, the old dudes used to rave about how good Black Diamonds were. Since I was 13 or so, throwing $10+ at a set of strings wasn't exactly a frequent occasion, so I made them last. I remember that I kept one set on there for so long that the wraps on the E string began to separate. I could fit a Fender medium pick between them when I finally changed strings. They sucked, but they worked, plus they were the only thing you could get in the little 1/2 horse town I grew up in. I took my daughter to buy strings for her new guitar on Saturday and she picked a pack of light blue Ernie Ball for $3.50.. Couldn't have done that when I was her age!

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