MM National strings Nickel v Phosphor Bronze

[robn]

For those who haven't tried the MM National Newtone pure nickel strings yet,
this may be of interest.

I did quick recording last night of my guitar fitted with nickel strings and have spliced it into a recording I did a few months ago with phospor bronze strings. The sound clips give an indication of the tone difference between phosphor bronze and nickel strings on this particular guitar, a wood-bodied Resound Blues with a NRP cone. All the sound clips were done acoustically with an SM57, Behringer valve pre-amp (the very cheap one!) straight into my laptop sound card with no EQ. I used "Audacity", the free recording shareware, to splice the clips together.

I think that the phosphor bronze strings have a warm tone and more bass, whereas the nickels have a harsher "Delta" sound. I don't "prefer" one set over the other, both sets of strings have a great sound and playability - but are quite different. Strangely, I seem to have an urge to play the guitar more aggressively (or should that be emotionally?) when it is fitted with nickel strings!

Excuse the "first take" playing - I only had an hour last night (while my better half watched "Eastenders") to set up my kit and get the job done.

The recording is the bottom of the 4 on MySpace, marked Resound Blues Natio...

profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=137882556



Since this picture was taken, I now have a Dave King mag p/u fitted to the guitar (not used in the recording process above). When I plug the p/u direct into a guitar amp, the string balance, in terms of both the volume of each string and tone, is much, much better with the pure nickel strings than with phosphor bronze strings, which tended to have a booming bass and overly loud 1st and 2nd string - a usable sound but it needed to be carefully EQ'd.

Robn

[1928triolian]

Hi Robn!

Very enjoyable and useful!
Also, I liked your playing and your guitar.
I tend to prefer phosphor bronze on wood guitars, and nickel on metal bodied.... but the contrary is very interesting too!

thanks again,

1928

[tark]

Hi Robn,

For what it's worth. the wound strings will sound brighter the harder the metal they are wound with. This seems obvious when you think about it, but it's something that isn't often explained about strings, particularly by the string manufacturers!

So strings wound with copper or phosphor bronze sound 'warmer' than strings wound with brass (often called 'bronze') nickel, nickel steel or stainless steel (listed in order of warm to bright). Nickel is a magnetic material so nickel wound strings will produce a slightly higher and more consistently balanced output with a magnetic pickup than strings wound with copper, P bronze or brass since with those materials only the steel core of the string is affecting the magnetic field.

Plain strings in almost all string sets are normally high carbon steel plated with tin, so they sound the same for P bronze or nickel wound sets. Other platings are sometimes used and that does seem to make a difference to the sound of plain strings (and sometime stainless steel is used). For instance the Martin SP strings have brass or P bronze plated plains (and core wire on the wound apparently). To my ears the SP strings have a very odd hollow sound.

[Blues Pertti]

Hi Robn

Very nice and informative test!

Pertti