What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

[Coma]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

When i was younger and started playing downtuned, I used 10's or 11's with the A and low E swapped to a heavier gauge for less slop. So was my own little custom set. Nowadays, that's not really necessary, with all the specialised sets you can get. But I remember when they first started selling specialty sets oriented at metal players who tuned low, was right about the same time Korn and their ilk started getting really big.

 

[kramersteen]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

Nay to KORN!

 

[Coma]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

Nay to KORN!

Preaching to the choir, man. I was just the right age to get suckered into the whole nu-metal craze. Luckily, 80's thrash dug its claws into me before that coud happen.

 

[Gtrjunior]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

I use a standard .10 gauge for Gibson scale and .09 for fender scale. Years ago I experimented with the skinny top heavy bottom sets but for me a regular set works just fine.

 

[Chris0709]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

8s are great to have on at least one guitar, makes you be more articulate lest you over bend and miss the note. Seems silly but they are so easy to play it's hard and sometimes I like the challenge!

 

[dave74]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

These "weird" sets are all created to downtuned, modern metal instruments.

I favor D'Addario XL BT (Balanced Tension) strings:

http://www.daddario.com/balanced_tension.page?sid=6f3a8844-4b15-4b54-a508-9292d4fba5be#sets

When used for the first time, you need to adjust the polepieces' stagger for compensate the evenness of output of the strings. Once done, you'll feel "at home".

/Peter

If they did a light/medium-hybrid set of those (with a wound 3rd) it would be just about the same as my customized sets for Eb ( for both 25" or 25.5")
10,13,18w,28,38,50 (well-balanced on the wounds and lighter on the plains)

 

[Boogie Bill]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

Probably the weirdest gauge was the super light Fender set they marketed for Telecasters; I think these were the now common 8-38 sets. The main appeal of these was that they intonated perfectly on the brass 3-saddle Tele bridge. I Iiked the Ball Skinny Top Heavy Bottom on my vintage Strat. And I used Peavey 9s for a while. Their middle strings were slightly different than the standard 9 set.

Most interesting though...the old Fender nylon tape wound strings. On my Tele and my Duo-Sonic...bam...instant jazz guitar. Slick feel.

Bill

 

[greekdude]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

8s are great to have on at least one guitar, makes you be more articulate lest you over bend and miss the note. Seems silly but they are so easy to play it's hard and sometimes I like the challenge!

granted, heavier (11+) gauge strings are OK for practice, but having them for regular guitars is just making it harder for no substantial benefit. Wasn't EVH who said why make it harder than it has to be?

 

[beaubrummels]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

But 11-70? I don't care how big your hand are, that is ..... f'ed up.

Or tuned down.

 

[Sirion]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

It might just be me, but I always feel weirded out when playing the light/heavy sets. I have played the Fender .009-.040 sets for many years, and they have more or less equal tension among the strings. I found that this set had a very natural feel to it, long before I knew anything about string tension. On the light/heavy sets, on the other hand the skip in tension between the wound and unwound strings always feels weird in my hands. Fortunately, I also tend to like the sound of lighter strings better, so I have had little incentive to try to adapt.

 

[BleedingFingertips]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

One weird thing about string gauges is that manufacturers are not very consistent in their offers. For instance, take the Ernie Balls Beefy's (11-54) and Not even slinky's (12-56). Say, I would use the former for one whole step down (D) and the latter for two whole steps down (C) on a 25.5 scale. But for Drop C I would use the same Beefy set but with a 0.056 gauge for the low E string to compensate for reduced tension. Alas, there ain't such thing as a Ernie Ball 11-56 set. So I end up using sets from different manufacturers.

Now I use D'Addario EXL117 (11-56) for D, Rotosound Michael Amott Signature (11-59) for Drop C and DR DDT (12-60) for C.

 

[toowrongfoo]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

I love Korn.

Whatever came on this Caparison were pretty crappy.

 

[SrDeMaFp]

Re: What are the weirdest gauge strings you've ever played on?

Definitely the GHS ZW-LO set 11-70