Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
Not strictly a review, but I have a question about strings. I currently use D'Addario Pro-Arte Clear Nylon Composite strings (EJ25C) on my flamenco guitar (mostly due to local availability). The basses sound good to me, and the E and B trebles are ok; however, the G treble always seems to be noticably more lifeless than the other strings. After a week or two there seems to be a bit of an improvement, but still not really happy with them. I generally like brighter, snappier? trebles. I also probably have a lighter touch/attack than some players.
I was hoping the wealth of knowledge on this forum could help steer me toward some options. I am looking to narrow down the time and money required to search out the strings that work best for me, might be wishful thinking :).
The dynacores and composites from Dadario tend to be brighter. some guitars inherently have brighter trebles (bracing?) My cheaper guitars do better with composites.
My experience is that different guitars need different strings, but if your looking for bright strings try Savarez corum, I think that they are as bright as it gets.
Corum are basses. Did you mean Aliance (carbon) trebles?
I prefer cantiga basses to corum, they sound awesome on my negra. Although D'adario makes long life basses that do just that - live longer.
How many sets of basses do you guys go through before changing your trebles? Basses only last me about 1 month here before becoming completely revolting, but trebles seem to stay quite acceptable for much longer. My current trebels are Alliance and I think they're on their 3rd set of basses. Tempted to change the trebles just to test how an acceptable old set compares with a new set.
however, the G treble always seems to be noticably more lifeless than the other strings
I've got the exact same problem and haven't managed to solve it despite having tried many different kinds of strings. I've been wondering if it's not some weakness that has developed somewhere in the guitar. It doesn't seem to be related to me as a player (at least not directly) as other players have tried the guitar and noticed the same problem.
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
I had a set of Pro-Arte Carbons on my blanca last year - they sounded pretty great. Would be good to test them against the Saverez Alliance for brightness / longevity.
I'll have to give those a try. For some reason, when I went browsing around the webternet for these strings, I ended up on an article discussing Daddario's counterfeit string problem. I'd never heard of that before. Just seems like guitar strings are a weird thing to counterfeit...
_____________________________
"Anything you do can be fixed. What you cannot fix is the perfection of a blank page. What you cannot fix is that pristine, unsullied whiteness of a screen or a page with nothing on it—because there’s nothing there to fix."
I really like Allince trebles on my guitar. The G string is better than anything else that i have tried
_____________________________
Ah well, there was a fantastic passion there, in my case anyway. I discovered flamenco very early on. It grips you in a way that you can't get away - Paco Pena