Ernie Ball Cobalt Strings
Mar 23, 2012 10:17:09 GMT -5
Post by aliensporebomb on Mar 23, 2012 10:17:09 GMT -5
Well I've had them on the strat for over a week now and wanted to let them "set in" for a bit to see if what I thought about them held.
It does.
First of all, I don't know what drugs Petrucci is on but his commentary about the playing feel of the stings was that they were "buttery".
If you compare the windings of lower E, A and D strings they actually feel totally different than the windings on the GHS Santanas - those strings felt buttery.
These windings feel tighter and have a more piano like sound when played clean. A slightly rougher feeling wound string but I can't argue with the sonic results. The tuning stability seems right too.
Secondly, tonally under a distortion mode you kind of get a best of both worlds effect. In my lead playing with other types of strings I usually was able to either get a singing sound with little bottom or some good bottom but it's hard to get more soaring sustained notes due to the predominance of the bass frequencies. With the cobalts, I finally found a string with a soaring component and a bass component together.
Thirdly, the string tension feels slightly higher than that of a .009 gauge set but for reasons unknown to me I am able to play somewhat faster on these strings either via flatpicked or legato playing - they feel slipprier even though the tension is a bit higher. For whatever reason, these strings give me some more "competence" at playing in my usual style.
Fourth, the other thing that was nice is that they seem to sound "new" longer. Or rather, they still sound new a week or so later.
My skin chemistry usually causes a set of strings to sound dull pretty quick and then they sound dull for the life of the set - not so here.
I was skeptical at my findings so went to one of my other guitars for a few days and came back to this one.
$10 for a pack of strings seems like quite a lot of money - maybe deals can be had somewhere. I'm going to try how long this set lasts viably and we'll take it from there.
It does.
First of all, I don't know what drugs Petrucci is on but his commentary about the playing feel of the stings was that they were "buttery".
If you compare the windings of lower E, A and D strings they actually feel totally different than the windings on the GHS Santanas - those strings felt buttery.
These windings feel tighter and have a more piano like sound when played clean. A slightly rougher feeling wound string but I can't argue with the sonic results. The tuning stability seems right too.
Secondly, tonally under a distortion mode you kind of get a best of both worlds effect. In my lead playing with other types of strings I usually was able to either get a singing sound with little bottom or some good bottom but it's hard to get more soaring sustained notes due to the predominance of the bass frequencies. With the cobalts, I finally found a string with a soaring component and a bass component together.
Thirdly, the string tension feels slightly higher than that of a .009 gauge set but for reasons unknown to me I am able to play somewhat faster on these strings either via flatpicked or legato playing - they feel slipprier even though the tension is a bit higher. For whatever reason, these strings give me some more "competence" at playing in my usual style.
Fourth, the other thing that was nice is that they seem to sound "new" longer. Or rather, they still sound new a week or so later.
My skin chemistry usually causes a set of strings to sound dull pretty quick and then they sound dull for the life of the set - not so here.
I was skeptical at my findings so went to one of my other guitars for a few days and came back to this one.
$10 for a pack of strings seems like quite a lot of money - maybe deals can be had somewhere. I'm going to try how long this set lasts viably and we'll take it from there.
