Can it be that dead, old grimy roundwound strings sound like new , fresh Flatwounds?

I remember the last time I tried Flatwounds thinking “Jesus , these sound like dead old roundwounds!”

Anyone else thought this…?

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Last edited: Feb 02, 2024 16:18:01

I wish there were a process to make round wounds sound dead. That is my favorite sound, and it is basically not possible anymore unless I wait years for the strings to get dead. DR used to make strings called zebras that sound brilliant after about a month, but they stopped making them. Old round wounds have a tone that nothing can duplicate.

Daniel Deathtide

Last edited: Jul 08, 2023 10:58:27

Samurai wrote:

What about plain strings?)

Two things come to mind. In an earlier phase of life, I worked as an aircraft mechanic and as a requirement for that certification, I had to study corrosion. Corrosion is, essentially, slow motion burning. Just as a fire requires fuel, heat and oxygen, corrosion requires a base material, an electrolyte and oxygen, although in the case of some metals, the oxygen can actually be leached from the metal itself, known as concentration cell corrosion. Another possibility for corrosion is direct chemical attack, such as a metal being dissolved by an acid.

The base material is inevitable; that has to be there, and that is what needs to be protected. Oxygen is pretty much inevitable as well; we don’t go to the moon to play guitar. So that leaves contaminants and electrolytes as elements we can control. If we avoid exposing our guitars to moisture, we are reducing electrolytes significantly. If you dip your fingertips into orange juice before playing your guitar, you will reap as you have sewn, and will get no pity from me when your strings, plain or wound, live short, eventful lives. More realistically, keeping your hands dry helps. If you perspire profusely, keeping a polish cloth nearby can be helpful.

Skin oils, and contaminants on your fingers can damage plain strings. Skin oils are a fact of life, and can be defeated with the swipe of an absorbent cloth. Other contaminants can harbor moisture and help the cause of corrosion. (Corrosion, as an entity, needs no help from any of us. It’s doing just fine on its own.) The polish cloth, or the Music Nomad cleaning tool is the best tool. But there is another side to this.

There are some plated single strings available, such as Pyramid strings. I have limited experience with these, but plating an easily corrodable material with a more corrosion-resistant material, such as plating plain steel with silver, will extend string life.

Compared to the lower three strings, the upper three strings lead a very rough life. They are bent more, and having smaller diameters are less likely to stand up to the attack of the pick. Apart from corrosion, the yield strength of a material is a major factor in string life. Steel is highly elastic and capable of being stretched and recovering when the tension is released.

However, especially in cases of repeated changes in tension, strings can be tensioned to the point where they cannot recover. This can happen in one place along the length of the string, and this would profoundly affect the intonation of the string, rendering it useless. If you have a string to spare and some time to waste, you can de-tension and re-tension the high E on a guitar repeatedly and eventually the string will become useless, or possibly break.

Metals tend to harden when they are repeatedly deformed, known as work hardening. Once this happens, the elasticity is out of the picture and the metal will break much more easily. This is probably why strings will spontaneously break, from time to time.

While I consider wound strings to be very long-lived, plain strings are pretty much disposable.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

DeathTide wrote:

Wow great essay! I think I am lucky that my hand oils aren't very bad, my strings don't really corrode. And I almost never wipe them. I used to use Fast Fret before playing, then a phase where I'd drip my fingertips with vitamin E, but now I just rough it.

Do you think that when strings go dull, that's an early stage of corrosion? I don't mean stretched out and not usable, but just losing their brightness. I realize the metal composition plays a role in this also, but how so? I ask because I would love some way to dull round wound strings!

That’s a great question. About all can come up with is that anything which changes the character of the string from how it was manufactured will detract from the sound.

I’ve been exposed some very basic metallurgy, but I’m no expert on the subject. From what I remember, a lot of the characteristics of metals happen at microscopic scale. Corrosion can occur at a very small scale, and be undetectable to the naked eye, but visible under magnification. Likewise, any mechanical wear, such as from contacting frets, or pitting from corrosion would have the effect of changing the character of the string, at least in a small way and this would have a negative effect on the evenness of the strings vibration.

The core of wound strings, and of course, the entirety of plain strings, is under tension, and with the bending motion of notes being fretted, as well as notes being struck by the pick, the string probably loses some elasticity, over time just from work hardening.

I had earlier mentioned the strings on my lap steel, which were put on the instrument, in 1998. These retained pitch quite well, even when it was left in its gig bag for long periods of time. This makes me think that the static load of being tuned to pitch isn’t that big of a problem, but that may change when a string is picked, or bent by being pressed down on a fret. Where that is concerned, piano strings seem to last a very long time, in spite of being tuned to pitch for many years, on end.

A guitar string leads a tougher existence than a violin string, because it is struck by a pick and fretted. A steel guitar string has it a bit easier, still being struck by picks, but not being pressed against frets, while a violin string is still bent, when the string is pressed onto the unfretted fingerboard, but never experiences being bent onto a fret, and the action of a bow is probably a lot more gentle than even picking plucked fingerstyle. Piano strings are struck by felt hammers and probably have it the best of any string. Like I said, how often do you hear of a piano requiring the strings to be changed?

I could be all washed up, but my thinking would be along the lines of the behavior of a tuning fork. I nice, pristine tuning fork will probably be a lot more true, and have better sustain than a tuning fork that had irregularities, whether from corrosion, or mechanical damage. Likewise, anything that damages a guitar string, even very lightly, will have an effect on the way the string vibrates, and, IMHO, this is what kills strings.

I’ve noticed that brand new strings sound “stringy” to me. By this, I mean that they are a bit over the top for the first few hours of playing time. Stretching must have some effect, however, it couldn’t be all that much. I recently put some new Thomastiks on a Tele, and it lost a little bit of pitch the first day, but not much, maybe 10 - 15 cents.

I wonder if that initial brightness goes away because of work hardening of the core. That makes as much sense as anything I can come up with, because whatever the change is, it doesn’t seem to be tied to a significant drop in pitch. With that in mind, you could try tuning round wounds slightly sharp, leave them at a higher pitch for a while, then tuning them back to pitch.

If I remember, I’ll try that, the next time I put a set of round wound strings on a guitar, unless they are Thomastik round wounds, which I consider sacred.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Last edited: Jul 08, 2023 17:03:15

DeathTide wrote:

Ah! Fascinating. I tried a Thomasik once and I don't remember being blown away by them. Methinks I'll have to give them another try. Impressive about only flattening a few cents on the first day, dang! It may be "light and unseeable" corrosion that makes old strings sound great to me. I do have a ridiculously bright setup, it shrieks if I just do guitar-reverb-amp. Using the amp tone controls is far too global; I only want to affect around 2kHz - 4kHz to hone those drips, and also around 100Hz to even out that low E. Dull strings hardly need more than a high pass, but new strings are shrill, "scream like banshee!" (Major 80s points to anyone who gets that movie reference!)

I know the syndrome of which you speak. I recently was doing some work on a Tele and put on an inexpensive set of round wounds while I dialed it in. They sounded horrible, if that good. These were just awful sounding strings with no character, but an awful, buzzy sound that made me cringe. A few days ago, I put on a set of Thomastik Jazz Swings, and it was like stepping into a comfortable pair of shoes.

I lock my strings by pulling the loose end of the string under and trapping it under the portion of the string that is feeding into the post of the machine head.

I try to have less than one full turn on the post, which reduces the potential for binding. When I do this, normally, I may have to tweak the tuning slightly for the first couple of times I play the guitar, but overall, they tend to stay in tune pretty well. I used to try to have several wraps on the post, but I suspect that binding between those wraps causes a lot of problems, and is misinterpreted as the string stretching. At least in the case of steel strings, there shouldn’t be all that much stretching going on.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

I did it that way, myself, for a while, but when I got my first guitar with locking machine heads, the strings were probably less than 1/4 turn around the post, and it was very stable. I did some cipherin’ and realized that multiple wraps bound against each other. So the next time I changed strings on a guitar without locking machine heads, I locked the string and shot for less than 1/2 turn on the post. I found that even without locking machines, I got excellent stability.

Thomastik has a 13-53 set. Not as thick as some other brands, but at least fairly heavy.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

DeathTide wrote:

Is that a half turn with tuner peg holes or split shafts? The way this very competent guitar tech strong it up was with only one wind and no over-under. One thing about loading up the string on the peg is that you can get the break angle nice and low on the nut. If that matters?!!

Split machine heads are a different matter, entirely. I have replaced the split post heads with Gotohs, so I can manually lock the strings. Tne only thing I have against split post machine heads is that it’s essentially impossible to lock the tail of the string under that first wrap.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

DeathTide wrote:

I do an over-under with the split shafts, one loop over and the rest under. Maybe I'll try knocking down the number of lower loops.

I would. Lower loops make me nervous.

The artist formerly known as: Synchro

When Surf Guitar is outlawed only outlaws will play Surf Guitar.

Old rounds sound like old rounds. They can't replicate the stiffness of flats because of their construction. Slide between two notes on a flat and on a round and hear the difference.

As for tuners, I only like split shaft tuners because they allow me to remove the strings, work on the guitar and put the strings back on. I can't imagine why any other type of tuner would exist since once you take the strings off, you can't put them back on. So wasteful. I hate my Epiphone Coronet for that and would put split shaft tuners on it if they existed for Gibson-type guitars.