Rotosound Guitar Strings

I first became aware of pure nickel strings when I bought a set from from Callahan along with the purchase of one of the amazing strat bridge/tail piece upgrades. I was very impressed with these strings. They felt very comfortable and lent themselves to the constant bending of blues players. They also had a superior warm tone and none of the annoying break in period associated with steel nickel coated strings. They were much slinkier—11s felt more like 10s. They also stretched out quicker and made changing strings faster. Finally pure nickel strings lasted MUCH MUCH MUCH longer than nickel plated strings. If your strings turn dark because of the acidity of your fingers, these effect is much less pronounced with pure nickel strings. All in all these strings were better in every respect.

BACKGROUND

Before I discovered Rotosounds I was playing GHS Burnished Nickel Strings. GHS Burnished Nickel strings were not sold in many local guitar shops. I had trouble finding them locally. I went to one of my local mom and pop guitar stores (Highland Music in Birmingham, AL) and asked the owner about maybe stocking them. He was right in the middle of calling in a string order so he added a case of the GHS Burnished Nickels to the order. Well, I didn’t make it back to this store for a couple of months. They don’t really know me at this store—for the most part I am another anonymous customer. The owner was not present when I returned so I asked the clerk for set of Burnished Nickels and he told me a funny story:

“this guy comes in and orders a box and never shows back up. I need a cheap set of strings to restring a customer’s guitar with so I grabbed a set of these. Wow! These are the greatest strings. They remind me of the strings I used to get back in the 70’s.”

"Well now we recommend these strings to all customers and GHS Burnished Nickels have become the house brand of guitar strings". Cool I thought. I explained to the clerk that the magic is the pure nickel and that there are lots of pure nickel strings out there and that I was currently experimenting with other brands such as DR and GHS Nickel Rockers, and Gibson Vintage Les Paul Strings. The clerk sorted gave me that look like he is the only one in the store who knows anything. Little did he know I was the one who turned his store owner and thus him and his customers on to Burnished Nickels in the first place. Oh well. You call always tell those types by their inability to listen.

I did a little research on pure nickel strings and the industries move over to nickel plated strings. Nickel strings were all that was available in the early 70’s. Through the seventies string companies started using steal cores with nickel plating. This was a cost cutting method. They sacrificed all the superior quality of the solid nickel for steal cores with nickel plating which could be made much cheaper. America started off shoring much of its industry at this time so once cheap nickel was now expensive since it came from overseas. Further, guitar players in the late 70s were looking for a brighter more aggressive sound and the steel plated strings had this quality, even if they did not last nearly as long or overall sound as good. There is quite a bit of arguing among the old timers as to why the pure nickels went out of fashion. Was it simply cost cutting or was it changes in the tone guitarist were seeking. I think it is reasonable to conclude both factors played a important role.

The first set of pure nickels I played were the Gibson Les Paul Vintage strings—the ones with the red threads above the balls. I was a teenager then and new nothing of steel vs nickel but I knew these were great strings. I only had access to them for awhile then I switched to Boomers or something. I was intrigued to later learn only recently that these were pure nickel strings. The DR pure Nickels are ok and the Nickel Rockers, the ones endorsed by Eric Johnson, I like a little more. Before discovering the RotoSounds, the GHS Burnished nickel strings were my favorite. Where the DRs were more dull and the GHS Rockers were a little edgy the Burmished Nickel had the best tonal balance and most consistent feel. This was more of a preference thing than one being hands down superior to the other. Note that any nickel string will be better sounding, longer lasting, and more consistent with regard to tuning and stretching than a nickel plated string.

ENTER ROTOSOUND

As you know I am a Bare Knuckle Pickup Dealer. Bare Kuckle ships their pickups with Rotosound steel nickel plated strings. When I found myself out of GHS Burnished Nickels I tried a set of these -WOW. Then I tried another. Although these strings were not pure nickels (to my surprise--they shared many of the advantages )they were a better strings to me than the Burnished nickels. The sound was not as warm but they were long lasting, and I mean long lasting (these strings are untreated—I do not even mess with those) and they sounded great. I contacted Rotosound to find out that they are now introducing a line of Pure Nickel strings. I ordered a few cases and I am very happy with these strings. Rotosound strings are the highest quality strings I have ever encountered. They last a very long time. If you want long lasting strings you do not need to pay extra for those horrible sounding treated strings. Just play a pure nickel string or better yet any of the Rotosounds. The Rotosounds are very slinky and bit more consistent than the GHS Burnished nickels. And this is saying a lot because GHS Burnished nickels are much more consistent from pack to pack than Daddario or Super Slinkys.

Whether you buy GHS, Daddario, DR (the handmade string (yeah right) or any of the other major brands of strings that line the shelf of your local guitar store I must inform you that all these strings come from the same factory, made by the same machines and same employees. Each company has their own set of specifications that the strings are made with. Other than that, all these strings are basically the same.

Rotosound operates completely independent from all these other strings manufactures which share the same production and research facilities. Only the marketing and magazine ads of other string companies are unique. Rotosound has invested in their own manufacturing facilities for making strings, their own tools, and their product research teams are there’s and theirs alone. This makes them totally independent and unique from the rest of the major string companies. This is probably why their strings are so much better and they offer so many more options that the other companies don’t. If you travel to Europe you will quickly see that RotoSound is the string of choice by a wide margin all over. Only in America do strings companies like Daddario and GHS hold a reputable place in the market.

Rotosound has been making strings since the 50’s and 60’s, they made strings for jazz greats and Jimmy Hendrix used Roto Sound ever since his first visit to England.

The above information should be enough to entice you to try a set of RotoSound strings. I would suggest the pure nickels. You’ll be blown away by these. If you’re a metal player you like the steel nickel plated and the RotoSounds are top notch. Better yet, I am hearing great things about the new Rotosound PURE STEEL strings. These are for metal heads. Remember, as much as I enjoyed the GHS pure nickel strings, I stopped playing them for the Rotosound steel nickel wound strings. Now that I have the RotoSound Pure Nickels I am in heaven.