I got the strings last night. I first noticed how incredibly beefy the low B was. I took out the digital caliper and measured it. A whopping .153. That's about where I expected it to be, with about 50 lbs of tension. It has a taper to about 2", which is great because it will even work for string-thru basses.
I strung up my modified OLP MM5 (34" scale) with the ZOG strings and played around with them for about an hour, testing them fingerstyle, with a pick, slapping, and just a small amount of tapping.
Picking - I played with both a heavy pick and a light pick and plucked them near the bridge, over the pickup, and toward the neck. I'm not normally a neck plucker, but I noticed that these strings seemed to feel fairly consistent in terms of balance when played there. They responded well to a pick and weren't overly bright.
Slapping, I enjoyed. The high tension on the lower strings gave a very articulate sound, and the lower tension on the D and G strings made plucking and double-plucking a breeze. They had a bright nickel sound to them. I was actually able to get a decent slap tone out of them on the OLP, which as I've said before, isn't much to my liking due to the pickup and preamp combination it has.
Fingerstyle, I definitely noticed that the strings are pretty smooth and reasonably responsive to dynamic changes. They don't feel like they catch at all, so that's a plus. Tonally, the consistency was right about there. You can only get so close, though, without the physical limitation.
All-in-all, for $30, these strings were on par with other $30 nickel sets, but with the added benefit of the huge, tight low B-string (probably worth it just for that). I have read that they are like D'Addarios. It's been 8 years since I've touched that brand, but it sounds like a reasonable claim - smooth and moderately priced.
Given the nature and claim of these strings, I have to discuss the more technical aspects of these strings and the progressive tension. Let it be known that I first played the strings for an hour before measuring any of them except the B-string. Given that I don't know the exact nature of the string construction or unit weights, I can only make tension estimations, so I relied on feel. After an hour, I felt that the EAD-strings felt a bit off. Tonally, they were in the ballpark, but the feel was different.
I decided to break out the digital caliper, and using estimations of D'Addario's website, here is the approximate string tension for these strings:
G: 34 lbs
D: 35 lbs
A: 42 lbs
E: 51 lbs
B: 50 lbs
The E-string actually felt like it had more than 1 lb of tension greater than the low B-string, but I can only speculate how much or if it was only perceived tension. Regardless, it was apparent that the step in tension between strings was quite off from the change in tension posted for the typical 4-string set, looking more like an arctangent curve than a linear progression. I think that if he were to drop the E-string down and bump the D-string up, he could level the tension out to something a bit smoother (34lbs 38lbs 42lbs 46lbs 50lbs, more or less). Just my recommendation, though. I'm really curious to try out the other 3 guitar string sets I bought, to see if I get the same feeling about them, or if the tension is a bit more consistently spaced.
In summation, every string maker has their own way of doing things, and I see ZOG as a step in the right direction. Like ixlramp has been saying, the progressive tension thing is ideal.
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