As if I weren’t already blowing enough money on arcane strings, I’ve got a new obsession: Thomastik-Infeld Plectrum series acoustic strings (which sell for $24 in the U.S.).
If you hang out here much, you’ve heard me bitch incessantly about acoustic strings. I hate the way most modern strings are all hyped treble […]
Holy crap! Now THAT’S a guitar string!
Man, it pays to curate a blog frequented by smart people!
I wrote last week about my experiment with silk-and-steel strings.
It’s the latest chapter in my ongoing search for the right acoustic strings. Most available options simply sound far too harsh and bright to […]
Bronze isn’t so bad after all!
A quick update to last week’s post about bronze and nickel strings: Over in the forum, Bear suggested trying 80/20 bronze strings. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I thought some of the strings I’d stocked up on and tried were 80/20s, but just realized they […]
Like Talos the Giant from Jason & the Argonauts, most modern acoustic strings are made from bronze. Like him, they can be cruel and inflexible.
UPDATE: I’ve updated the audio examples to include 80/20 bronze strings, as detailed in this newer post.
Can I share my steel-string psychodrama?
I’m lucky enough to […]
Nicely mutated and pretty f’ed up, that is.
Ordinarily, these Thomastik-Infeld Classic S strings sound more like nylon strings than steel ones.
But their cores ARE steel — which means you can play through a magnetic pickup and mutilate the tone with amps and effects. I’m playing through effects designed for Apple’s […]
No longer ridiculously expensive. Now they’re just very expensive.
I spent last week covering the Musikmesse musical instrument trade show in Frankfurt, Germany, for Premier Guitar. I had a blast, and Chris Kies and I posted details and pics of more than 70 new products. (Here’s the short list of our personal faves.) […]
Silk and steel — bad-ass, or strictly for wusses?.
It’s been a long, long time since I’ve tried silk and steel strings.
I’ve always thought of them as a transitional set for students migrating from nylon to steel strings. At least that’s how my mom used to explain them to me back […]
What could possibly go wrong?
There are two ways to approach amplifying an acoustic guitar: trying to duplicate the natural sound, only louder, and NOT trying to sound naturalistic at all. This post is about the second approach.
I love playing acoustic through an electric guitar amp (as opposed to a dedicated acoustic […]
EBow on a Dobro? Oh, yeah!
If you’ve screwed around much with an EBow—you know, that battery-powered plastic thingie that you slide against your guitar strings to magnetically invoke infinite sustain—you may have also noticed that it works on steel-string acoustic guitar, especially on the unwound first and second strings. It’s hardly an […]
After last week’s loudness experiments, and with the sonic carnage of NAMM just days away, I figured it was a good opportunity to dial down the decibels and share an interesting guitar/string combination I’ve been enjoying for a few months.
Last spring I wrote about several oddball acoustic strings I was trying out. […]
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