American Fingerstyle Guitar

So, about a month ago I posted some thoughts regarding the importance of strings to a guitar’s overall sound. As you may know,I’ve been playing Thomastik-Infeld strings on my guitars for over 15 years and have only used two other sets of strings out of necessity when I ran out while I was on the road. I’ve always loved them, they were perfect for my sound, and up until very recently they covered all the gauges I needed to do my work. And they take such great care of me, always getting me strings well ahead of my touring schedule.

But in last month’s Guitar Diaries blog I encouraged all guitarists to experiment with strings and I decided that I had to follow the same advice. What really tripped me into experimentation mode was a set of strings on one of Jeff Bamburg’s guitars on exhibit at the Montreal Guitar festival July 2-4. This guitar had been played by dozens upon dozens of folks in very humid conditions, and I’d played part of a mini-concert with that guitar under stage lights in extremely humid conditions. Death for most strings, especially for me, but when I got back home and played that guitar on July 6th they sounded rich in the low end with really nice sparkly highs; not quite brand new, but I’d have had no qualms performing with them. The strings in question are called Newtone, they’re hand-made in the UK by an ex-coal miner named Malcolm Newton.

Luckily I found a couple of extra set of strings in one of Jeff’s guitar cases and he kindly offered to let me try them out. I first strung up my Bamburg fanned fret and then my oldest Carruth, a 1995 14 fret OM that is very picky about strings. I was shocked. The Bamburg has always blown me away, rich bass, clear and present highs, and balanced. I still got that, but more. The bass was richer, the highs sparkly without being crispy, and the guitar was still balanced, but louder too, much louder. I was even more surprised by what the strings did to my old Carruth which has always been a little bottom heavy. Not anymore. While the bass was still there the strings seemed to create more balance than I’d ever heard, and it too was louder. Both my wife and daughter who hear more acoustic guitar than anyone should have to noticed the differences in both guitars.

So, who’d of thunk it? The man who hates phosphor bronze strings suddenly likes them now. What gives? What’s changed in the last 15 years with phosphor bronze? Just to test things out, I tried the nation’s number 1 phosphor bronze on one of my other Carruths and I got that trash can lid sound again. So there must be a difference between the strings.

And there is. Newtone does something only two other guitar string manufacturers do; wind their strings on a round core instead of a hex core. One of the things I noticed about the two different phosphor bronze strings was their overall tension. While the pounds of tension on the top and neck are almost exactly the same between two strings of the same diameter, the feel when fretting the strings is exceptionally different. Hex core strings are much stiffer feeling than round core strings.

The round core phosphor bronze strings are much mellower feeling and sounding, sustain for days, yet they still have the beautiful rich highs without the brittle quality. Round core strings are harder to wrap, take more experience making and inspecting, and so aren’t the popular choice of factory string operations. They’re more expensive as a result, but boy howdy, the strings really rock. These Newtone strings really intrigue me since they can custom make any gauge string I’ll need to get the most out of my ‘novelty’ guitars like the Carruth baritone, Carruth high-string and Carruth harp guitar I get later this year. For those of you that can get by with standard gauging you can try less expensive options by DR; they make a round core string called Sunbeam that gets great reviews and often favorably compared to the Newtone strings. Dean Markley also makes a round core string, but they’re harder to find than either Newtone or DR.

Subsequent to the beginning of the experiment, I’ve tried strings on my Korean Regal round neck and it sounds like a 1920’s era Dobro, the baritone which is now much louder and projects like the beast it is intended to be when I’m tuned B-B, and my 12-fret OM. They all sound better, louder, richer. I’m glad I took the plunge.

I’m going to use Newtone’s this weekend for upcoming shows in PA and NY and will report on how well they handle a weekend of performance. If they continue to perform the way they have, I will be making a switch.

So, I encourage all of you to create your own experiment and try to find the holy grail for your guitars.