The short life of strings
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2010 2:11 pm
There's nothing nicer than the sound of a brand-new set of strings on an accoustic guitar. All of those delicious high harmonic overtones give such a delightful crisp ring to every pluck and strum. Combine it with a bit of reverb, courtesy of the bathroom tiling, and there you are, at the Albert Hall, all your admiring fans paying rapt attention to your artistry.
Gordon, of course, experiences this for real not just in the world of the imagination, both for his genuine artistry and the fact that he must get through more strings in a month than I use in a lifetime.
Are you like me, an ex-guitarist, someone who used to play for hours a day but now sees the guitar gathering dust in the corner and only occasionally picks it up when something seen on TV or heard on the radio inspires a sudden rush of nostalgia.
What a disappointment when you retire-hurt after 15 minutes with your left hand throbbing in pain because the leather calouses of youth have been replaced by fingertips more like a baby's bottom.
Even more disappointing though, is that muddy sound from strings that have only been played a few times but have already lost their edge.
The nicest strings I ever played were a Christmas gift from my sister. She gave me a set of my normal Martin medium gauge, but also a set of Ovations which were fabulous. "Where did you get them ?" I asked, when I was unable to find anyone that had ever heard of them let alone had any in stock. Unfortunately she had absolutely no memory of the details of her Christmas shopping, and I never bought another set.
They did sound brighter for longer than any other string I ever used, so years later, courtesy of the internet, I set out to track some down. I did finally locate a source in the US, but in the course of my research I came across another intriguing possibility.
A guy called Pete Rohrbacher, analyzing why strings "go off", decided that the galvanic action caused in bronze windings on steel wire, using sweat as an electrolyte was the problem.
After experimenting with different metals, he came up with a titanium alloy string with electro-chemically matched nickel windings, which don't corrode under normal atmospheric or handling conditions.
They were about double the cost of normal strings, but on a whim and a hunch I ordered a set of medium gauge around Christmas 2004. They're still on the Levin, though I finally ordered a replacement set this Christmas because I'd broken the 2nd trying an experimental tuning.
If I were a professsional musician, I think I'd order a couple of gross of the Ovations (or if I were eccentric and very rich), but for the (very) occasional player that I am, I've never had another set of strings that still sounded good when they were five years old, so the extra cost of the Rohrbacher's was a good investment.
Gordon, of course, experiences this for real not just in the world of the imagination, both for his genuine artistry and the fact that he must get through more strings in a month than I use in a lifetime.
Are you like me, an ex-guitarist, someone who used to play for hours a day but now sees the guitar gathering dust in the corner and only occasionally picks it up when something seen on TV or heard on the radio inspires a sudden rush of nostalgia.
What a disappointment when you retire-hurt after 15 minutes with your left hand throbbing in pain because the leather calouses of youth have been replaced by fingertips more like a baby's bottom.
Even more disappointing though, is that muddy sound from strings that have only been played a few times but have already lost their edge.
The nicest strings I ever played were a Christmas gift from my sister. She gave me a set of my normal Martin medium gauge, but also a set of Ovations which were fabulous. "Where did you get them ?" I asked, when I was unable to find anyone that had ever heard of them let alone had any in stock. Unfortunately she had absolutely no memory of the details of her Christmas shopping, and I never bought another set.
They did sound brighter for longer than any other string I ever used, so years later, courtesy of the internet, I set out to track some down. I did finally locate a source in the US, but in the course of my research I came across another intriguing possibility.
A guy called Pete Rohrbacher, analyzing why strings "go off", decided that the galvanic action caused in bronze windings on steel wire, using sweat as an electrolyte was the problem.
After experimenting with different metals, he came up with a titanium alloy string with electro-chemically matched nickel windings, which don't corrode under normal atmospheric or handling conditions.
They were about double the cost of normal strings, but on a whim and a hunch I ordered a set of medium gauge around Christmas 2004. They're still on the Levin, though I finally ordered a replacement set this Christmas because I'd broken the 2nd trying an experimental tuning.
If I were a professsional musician, I think I'd order a couple of gross of the Ovations (or if I were eccentric and very rich), but for the (very) occasional player that I am, I've never had another set of strings that still sounded good when they were five years old, so the extra cost of the Rohrbacher's was a good investment.