String Test (old elixir vs new elixir)

V8

So I tried to do a A/B/C comparison between new & old strings. My method was hardly scientific. Same strings (elixir stainless steel, 10's), same setup (cables, pick, virtual amp/cab). What I missed was : strumming in exactly the same place (why I should have done this w/video!...next time) & playing with the same pick attack on two different days - trickier than one would think!

I used three states :

Strat w/old elixir strings (+/- 1 year).
Strat w/new elixir strings (slightly played in, about 2hrs)
Tele w/2mth old elixir's

I took a screenshot of the recording project and thought it might be fun to try and discern the different clips. Each of the first six clips is just one chord (open G) and then a little rock riff to finish off.

The "direct" recording is direct into the interface - no plug-in's or any processing.
The crunch recording is the rhythm channel on a ignite amps plugin (NRR-1) + cabinet impulse
The rock recording is the lead channel on a ignite amps plugin (NRR-1) + cabinet impulse

If you are interested - Get the wav, fullsize masked and unmasked screenshots here : https://app.box.com/s/09316661d32faf0f9f55

psyx

And what do you make of your findings?

V8

psyx wrote: And what do you make of your findings?

Ummmm, inconclusive...

I'll try the strat again in a few days, not sure how long a set of elixir's take to 'break in' - I'm familiar with classical long life strings (pro arte composites) taking about 2-3 days to settle in.

For me, there isn't much to differentiate the old and new elixir's on the strat in the recordings - if I did it blindfolded, I'd be guessing. The tele vs strat was easy enough to hear.

The strat has kinman woodstock plus pups and kinmans tolerate old strings better than other pups. The new strings sounded better acoustically (louder and a touch brighter) and felt a bit stiffer and a little slicker (like someone had applied fastfret) and held tuning better.

The one thing I really noticed was when plugged into the amp,- I had dialled in a bit of a 6k boost to bring out some glassy strat-ness with the old strings. I had dialled in a bit of a boost at around 2.5k for the Tele, which now worked best for the strat too. I ran a spectrograph plugin on the recordings and this wasn't really backed up by what I could see - the signals looked very similar.

The most interesting thing was the difference between the strat and tele. The woodstock plus set is darker than most strat pups - they really only brighten up under gain...lots of gain (fuzz + wah 8)).

So (for me) the humble SX tele beat up the uber modded strat on the direct recording, clean tone and I preferred the tele's crunch tone. Only when the the gain got BEEG did the strat start to shine. Regardless of the gain, it stayed crisp and clear, the tele just got muddy and indistinct. Though the tele never started to get noisy or feedback - which surprised me - I guess the stock SX pups arn't that bad.

So I learnt more about my two guitars pup's and their respective traits than old vs new strings. I reckon I didn't need to change the Strat's strings - they had a more life in them than I thought.

I might just be looking at a pup swop on the strat now... :-\