More about strings...
The announcement and release of our Straight Up Strings has raised a new awareness and stirred quite a bit of interest and questions about strings in general. The emails and calls have centered around a few specific issues, including: the difference between round and hex wires, why our strings intonate so well, how we selected the exact gauges, how do we go about achieving balance, and using our Straight Up Strings with pickups. Each of these are interesting points, and I'd like to share some of that with you.
Round wire vs hex wireWhen steel wire was first used for musical strings the wire that was used for both plain and wound strings was round. As I think you know, to produce the bass notes and keep the string tension low, a "wrap wire" is wound around a "core wire" on a machine that resembles a lathe. The loop of the string is placed in a small hook at one end of the machine, the free end is tensioned in a collet at the other end, and the string is spun at high speed as the wrap wire is wound around it from end to end. For years, round wire was used for both the plain strings and the core of the wound strings, but attaching a secure wrap wire to a round core wire has always been problematic because it is difficult to get a tight wrap that will not unravel. I'm not sure of the exact date that hex core wire was announced, but if I remember correctly, it was in the late 1960s. Having a core wire with a hexagonal shape enabled the wrap wire to be tightly drawn against the ridges in the wire, and this provided a tight unravel-free covering.
The National Musical String Company of New Brunswick, NJ, under the leadership of Herbert Hagel, continued to produce banjo and mandolin strings using round core wire in their wound strings. The round core wire actually produces a warmer cleaner tone for several reasons that go beyond the scope of this newsletter.
Because the wire is drawn through small dies that do wear, the hex core wire is not really a true hexagonal shape; it is more often rather irregular (one of the contributing factors to it not sounding as clean as round wire). But it is a necessary evil because of the tight, secure wrap which equates to longer string life and buzz-free strings. The wound strings on our Straight Up Strings are made with hex-core wire.
IntonationFolks have commented that our Straight Up Strings do intonate well. "Intonation" is the phenomenon of a string changing pitch when its tension increases as a result of it being pulled to the fretboard. Managing true pitch is difficult because thicker strings will change pitch more quickly (when drawn the same distance) than thinner strings. To solve this problem the bridge saddle is notched so that the thicker strings have a longer string-scale length than the thinner strings. (These are called "intonation-corrected" bridge saddles.) Banjo players have straight bridges so it is very typical to see their bridges cocked slightly counterclockwise to lengthen the string scale of the heavier strings.
True intonation was a very important focus for us when selecting the exact gauges for Straight Up Strings. This becomes an especially critical issue when selecting the core and wrap wire combinations for our wound strings.
As a side note, you may notice that our mandolin and mandola bridges have different intonation notches than most other Gibson-copy bridges. This is primarily because we have compensated for the elasticity of today's "mandolin wire" (which is quite different from the elasticity of the wire that was used in 1921 when Gibson received its patent for the adjustable bridge).
Measuring gaugesSome folks have asked us if we're just taking the word of our string manufacturer to determine gauges or if we are actually measuring strings. The question first popped up when we announced our .0115" gauge that we selected for our first string on both our Straight Up Strings
medium and
heavy sets.
We have measured every string we have tested to five decimal places, and we are spot-checking our production runs. This includes plain strings as well as wound strings.
We also measure the consistency of the flats on our hex core wire. The green micrometer in the photo above is designed for measuring wire and indicates the flats and high spots in hex core wire when we rotate the wire in the micrometer's jaws.
Balancing the soundIn addition to measuring wire gauges, and calculating the best combination of down pressures for the strings depending on where they sit on the bridge, we've followed the guidelines of
ISO 226-2003 which speaks to the perception of equal-loudness in humans. Formerly referred to as Fletcher-Munson, this study describes how we do not hear low notes as well as high ones, and how the intensity of low notes or high notes have to be adjusted so that we perceive the entire range of notes equally. It is an important element in balancing mandolins strings so that the open low G string is perceived at a similar intensity to the open high E when played with the same attack.
Using pickups with our stringsLastly, we've received questions asking if our Straight Up Strings for mandolin will perform on amplified mandolins. The outcome depends a great deal on the type of pickup used as well as how and where it is installed. From the little testing we have done and the responses we have had from musicians who do plug in, the improved balance of Straight Up Strings comes across on their amplified instruments.
We don't have enough data back on this, but I will provide an update as soon as we accumulate more information. We did have one person ask about using our strings on a solid body electric mandolin that had a coil-wound electro-magnetic pickup. Our wound strings are covered in a high quality phosphor-bronze wrap wire. Bronze is a non-ferrous material and does not contain any iron. As a result it has no magnetic properties and cannot excite the field of an electro-magnetic pickup. For all other piezo or acoustic amplification systems, the feedback is all positive.