D'Addario Phosphor Bronze EXP's

[bassman314]

After several attempts to search here and not finding anything, I decided to bite the bullet, and get them for my Michael Kelly AEB.

I decided to switch away from normal Phosphor bronze strings for a coupel of reasons. My fingers kept sticking to them, as they got older, which made it difficult to do light stuff. I'd get almost a "pop" as the strings pulled away from my fingers, especially on the D and G string. I found that they went dead quickly. I don't mean bright vs dead.. I mean dead dead dead... Boiling gave me about 2-3 gigs of good tone... Then dead...

I thought about sticking La Bella's on there, but the string gauges are so different, I didn't want to deal with filing the nut, doing saddle height adjustment (on a bone/plastic saddle), and getting the end pin to hold a normal E string was a pain in the butt already.

The coating isn't noticeable on the strings, unlike some of the other brands. The sound is bright, but well-defined. I can't wait for the tone to mellow out a l'il bit so I can get a nice woody thump from the E and A strings.

The coating does help from my fingers sticking to the strings, and as the coating is applied to the outer wrap wire prior to winding, I don't foress an issue with the coating flaking off as badly as other coated strings.

I'll do a f/u on this in a week or so to tell you how things sound at that time. heck.. I'll even see if I can get some sound samples.

[bassman314]

OK.. they've been on for about a month. Still sound great. Still good intonation and tone!

In that time, I took my AEB to Church camp for a week in SoCal.

I played her almost everyday in hot, dry conditions. My hands and arms were covered in sweat and sunblock. I think I managed to keep the kids from spraying Bug Spray around me when I was playing... I made sure I washed my hands before playing, however waterproof SPF45 is just that... waterproof...

Anyway, the coating held up! I haven't noticed any tarnishing on the bronze, and I don't notice any loss of tone!

I had a brand-new set of plain D'Addario's on my Acoustic Guitar (un-coated) and they are almost dead from the sweat and sunblock.

Hopefully, sound samples will follow soon. I still am trying to find a time to record them!