Elixir Nanoweb HD Light Phosphor Bronze Strings

Long-lasting strings with a difference

By Phil O'Keefe

Keeping your strings clean and fresh is important to good tone. It's always a good idea to keep a lint-free cloth nearby and use it to wipe off your strings whenever you finish playing, but sometimes that's just not enough. Some players have particularly bad issues with rusting and corroding strings due to their personal body chemistry, but no matter who you are, sooner or later the salts from sweat, oils from your hands, and bits of flaked-off skin are going to accumulate in the winds of the strings and cause corrosion and rust, and as soon as that starts, it will begin to have an adverse effect on your tone. As rust and corrosion progresses, it can also have a detrimental effect on the playability of the instrument, as well as the intonation.

Another issue that affects playability and tone is string gauge and tension. When you change the thickness of a string, it changes the amount of tension that is required to bring it up to pitch, with a thinner gauge string requiring less tension to bring up to the same pitch than a thicker one, and with heavier strings generally sounding bigger, bolder and subjectively "better." With the Nanoweb HD Lights, Taylor and Elixir have carefully selected and combined gauges to provide a smooth, consistent playing feel that is similar to regular light gauge strings, but with a bigger, bolder voice that stays consistent across all the strings. Additionally, they are coated strings that are designed to significantly extend the string's lifetime while reducing the effects of finger funk and delaying the onset of rust and corrosion.

What You Need To Know

• Developed in cooperation with Taylor Guitars, the Elixir Nanoweb HD Light strings are now installed as the factory-standard strings on all new 2014 guitars from Taylor. With that in mind, I tested them on my 1994 Taylor 510 acoustic, but they will work equally well on guitars from other companies too. 

• While the new Nanoweb HD Light Strings that I tested use a phosphor-bronze formula, they're also available in a 80/20 bronze alloy for those who prefer the brighter tone of bronze strings instead of phosphor bronze's somewhat warmer sound. Taylor is using the phosphor bronze version of the Elixir HD Light Strings.

• These strings use the Elixir Nanoweb coating, a thin fluoropolymer layer that helps protect the strings by preventing the accumulation of dirt and oils in the string windings. The plain steel strings are plated with an anti-rust treatment to help them last longer too. The Nanoweb coating is thinner and less noticeable under your fingers than the original Elixir Polyweb coating, and the Nanoweb coating has less effect on the sound of the strings, giving them a brighter sound that is more similar to conventional strings than Elixir's Polyweb coated strings.

• The Elixir Nanoweb HD Light strings use the same string gauges for the high E and B strings that you'll find in their regular medium gauge string sets, coupled with the same gauge strings for the low E, A and D strings as what you'll find in their standard light gauge sets, bridged with a .025 gauge G string that's exactly in-between the size used for their standard light (.024) and medium (.026) gauge sets.

The string gauges used in the Nanoweb HD Light Phosphor Bronze set are:

E .013  (27 lbs of string tension, given a 25.5" scale length)

B .017  (26 lbs)

G .025  (34 lbs)

D .032  (31 lbs)

A .042  (30 lbs)

E .053  (26 lbs)

• The amount of time that a set of strings will last is dependent on many factors, including how often and how hard you play them, and even the weather - I find I go through strings faster in the summer than in the winter because it's hotter and I sweat more, which rusts and corrodes the strings faster. With uncoated strings I can usually only get a week or so out of them in the summertime, while the Elixir Nanoweb strings will usually last for a month, and sometimes even a bit longer, and still sound relatively bright and fresh.

• Because the strings last longer, you'll spend more time playing and less time changing strings, which is a chore that most players don't particularly enjoy. The longevity also helps to offset the increased cost of Elixir Nanoweb HD Lights compared to uncoated strings.

Limitations

• While their longevity helps offset the increased price when compared to non-coated strings, the HD Lights have an MSRP that is $2 more per pack than the standard Elixir Light Gauge Nanoweb acoustic guitar strings.

• Some people are uncomfortable with coated strings, and prefer the feel of uncoated strings. However, the Nanoweb coating is thinner than the earlier and thicker Polyweb coating, and much less likely to be noticed when playing. As soon as strings start to rust, their sound and feel are degraded anyway, making coated strings a much longer lasting and better feeling alternative in the long run for many players.

• Occasionally you may encounter flaking of the Nanoweb coating. This is fairly rare, and in my experience it only happens when the strings have been left on the guitar for longer than normal - and by that I mean longer than the 3-5 times the length of time a normal, uncoated set of strings would typically last, which is about the length of time that you can usually coax out of a set of Elixir Nanoweb-coated strings.

Conclusions

I've been a big fan of Elixir's strings for many years now, and was eager to try the new Nanoweb HD Lights. They have the same bright, long-lasting tone I've come to expect from Nanoweb-coated Elixirs, and the same great feel under my fingers as the light gauge Nanoweb strings I typically use, but that feel has been further enhanced by the more consistent tension across all six strings that results from the new combination of string gauges they've introduced with the HD Lights, and the sound gains almost the same amount of boldness that you'd expect from a medium gauge set of strings while retaining much of the comfort and feel of a light gauge set. The thicker high E and B strings are a bit more difficult to bend than a regular set of light gauge strings, but just barely so, and the tonal balance across the strings is noticeably improved, and the increased fullness and articulation in the highs more than make up for the slightly increased string bending difficulty.

I'm glad to see companies like Taylor putting coated strings on their guitars. There's nothing worse than sitting down to try out a guitar at music store, only to find that the high-quality instrument you picked up to audition sounds dead and lifeless because it has finger funk that has built up all over the non-coated strings. With the Taylor factory using coated strings from Elixir, players have a much better chance of having a great first encounter with the guitar, which is good for Taylor, as well as for players. While the ideal string gauges are a matter of personal preference, the HD Lights offer a solid combination of great playing feel, even tension, excellent sound quality, and the long life that Elixir strings are so well known for. Throw a pack on your acoustic and see what you think, but in my opinion, Taylor and Elixir have come up with a great set of strings with the Nanoweb HD Lights.

Resources

Musician's Friend Elixir Nanoweb HD Light Phosphor-Bronze Strings online catalog page ($32.00 MSRP, $15.99 "street")

Elixir's Nanoweb HD Light product web page

Phil O'Keefe is a multi-instrumentalist, recording engineer / producer and the Senior Editor of Harmony Central. He has engineered, produced and performed on countless recording sessions in a diverse range of styles, with artists such as Alien Ant Farm, Jules Day, Voodoo Glow Skulls, John McGill, Michael Knott and Alexa's Wish. He is a former featured monthly columnist for EQ magazine, and his articles and product reviews have also appeared in Keyboard, Electronic Musician and Guitar Player magazines.