STRING THEORY
Don’t know the difference between nickel and Monel strings? Confused by hex- or round-core? Fear not, Curt Mangan is here to walk you through all your tonal options…
Fifteen years on from the company’s inception, Curt Mangan’s handmade strings have built an impressive roster of endorsees, from Kirk Fletcher to Allen Hinds and Matt Schofield. Prior to starting up his own company, Curt was with Ernie Ball for 17 years – and so he’s forgotten more about the way strings contribute to your tone than most of us will ever know.
Expanding on our cover feature’s theme of understanding how all the elements in your rig influence one another to generate your tone, Curt took us on a tour through the history of string design in the 20th century. Along the way, he was able to give great advice on what strings will suit your rig best – and why switching string spec may just complete your tone equation perfectly.
EARLYYEARS
“If you look back through the history of string making, in the early 1900s Monel was the most-used wire for making musical instrument strings,” Curt explains. “The old Gibson Sonomatics were all Monel. Monel is 67 per cent pure nickel, 30 per cent copper and three per cent of a mixture of other materials that make it Monel.
“The advantage to Monel is, number one, that it is extremely resistant to saltwater and so it’s used for the drive shafts of ocean vessels. It’s used for high-end trumpet valves, and a lot of aviation products use it. So that’s one of the benefits.
“Also, it has some unique tonal properties. Many people, for the acoustic side of it, say it brings out more of the sound of the wood on the acoustics. We’ve experimented with it on a lot of acoustics and mandolins. In fact, all of the old [Lloyd] Loar mandolins were all strung with Monel. Also, everything back then was done on a round core.
“Then, from what I’m finding out, somewhere in the 40s the acoustic world kind of gravitated to 80/20 bronze for the acoustics, but Gibson stayed with Monel for virtually everything they did up until the early 70s. So a lot of the pickups that Gibson developed were developed around Monel strings. That was kind of what they used for it.
“When I take a set of Monels and put them on something like a Les Paul-type of guitar with humbuckers, the Monel really sounds great on those. You get this really nice rich, rich tone in the neck pickup, and you get this little growl on the bridge pickup. It’s like I say, on that, it’s pretty nice.”
PURENICKEL
“Pure nickel, I’m not sure exactly when it came in, but I do know that virtually everything that Fender shipped from day one was pure nickel on a round core. If you listen to the surf and instrumental music of the early 50s and 60s, that was all pure nickel on a round core, but it was also big strings, too.
“When I got my first Jazzmaster, which would have been ’64, the gauge was 0.013 to 0.056. I mean, it was very heavy by today’s standards, but we weren’t bending strings yet and we were playing surf music. I had a Fender Piggyback Bassman, and that was my rig when I was about 14 years old, and it was… Well, I was in heaven! It sounded great. It was really good.
“Then the industry changed. It really changed. It all started in about ’68 and that was, I think, really one of the biggest guitar booms and innovation periods – ’67, ’68, somewhere back in there, with Clapton, Beck and Page and everything, the experimentation…
It just went to a whole new level at that point, I think.
“Of course, the industry went to a lighter-gauge string. Like I say, the set on that Jazzmaster was a 0.013 to 0.056. But somewhere along the line, someone threw away the 0.056, moved everything up and added a 0.010. The first set I ever got and put on my Jazzmaster… thank God the Jazzmaster had a locking tremolo and I was smart enough to actually lock it, because there wasn’t anybody around at that point, where I grew
“Monel has some unique tonal properties. Many say it brings out more of the sound of the wood on acoustics”
up, who knew anything about this. So you had to experiment with it and figure out how to adjust the neck and get it so it was finally playable.
“I have to admit, when I first started playing 0.010 to 0.046, I just thought the sound was horrible, but, boy, could you bend them. It took a long time. I mean, it took quite a while to get comfortable with – it’s a totally different technique of playing, and developing more of a lighter touch all the way around than what I’d spent the first part of my life doing. So, on the Fender side of things, you had pure nickel, roundcore. The Gibson side of things, you had Monel with round-core.
“In the acoustic world, it was primarily 80/20 bronze and 80/20 bronze is, as the name suggests, 80 per cent copper, 20 per cent zinc. For me, on some guitars that are maybe a little dark-sounding, the 80/20 kind of wakes it up. There are certain frequencies in the midrange that just seem to cut a little more. On certain guitars the 80/20 might be a little overpowering; the phosphor bronze is a perfect fit for that.”
NICKEL-STEEL
“Until about ’68, everything was pure nickel, like I say, Monel, 80/20, on a round core. But somewhere in the late 60s, around 1968 to 1970, thereabouts, the industry started to gravitate towards nickel-plated steel versus pure nickel. The advantage of it is that, number one, it’s less expensive, but it also has more steel in it. When we order it, they call it ‘NPS-8’, which means that there’s an eight per cent plating of pure nickel on the steel wire. So, magnetically, you’re going to have a little bit more mass with the nickel-plated steel.
“At that point, the industry just still called it ‘nickel wound’. In fact, they didn’t really tell anybody that they’d changed anything. So the formula for most strings, at that point – other than Monel – was that
everybody was using a round core with the nickel-plated steel string. That was probably the go-to string for just about everybody from ’68, say, up to around ’78, when the industry went over to a hex core.”
HEX-CORE VERSUS ROUND
“Hex-core is a wonderful product. What it does, when you’re making the string, is it gives the cover wire something to hang on to. What we have to do when we’re making the round-core strings is [when we get] towards the end of the wrap there’s a process that we do called ‘sledging’, which is where it actually flattens the wire to create a spot on the core wire where it creates an edge that the cover wire can hang onto. That’s why, when you’re installing round-core, you have to follow some steps to make sure you don’t compromise the winding prior to making sure it’s installed and all clamped down.
“But hex is very forgiving. You know, there are some people who are totally round-core and some people who are totally hex. There is a subtle difference in the tone between hex and round – and I’m not saying one is better or worse. It’s whatever a person likes. We just introduced nickel-plated steel on round-core, and when we first put it on a guitar, we all just went, ‘Wow. That’s pretty lively!’ And it is. It’s a really lively string. By comparison, the thing about pure nickel that I notice is that the bends are a little smoother for some reason.
“One thing of note is that changing between a hex core and a round core on a Strat with a floating tremolo, I found that I didn’t have to change any settings, period. Nothing. That was my experience with it. So I don’t think there’s hardly any [setup] difference – if any – at all. So that’s the round-/hex-core choice. It’s just whatever a player likes.
“I do think that the nickel-plated steel is just a hair punchier and a little brighter than pure nickel. Pure nickel, though, on certain guitars is amazing… A pure nickel string on a maple-neck Tele with a bright pickup is perfect. I mean, it’s ideal on some Teles like that, where the back pickup is a little brittle.
“The thing I also noticed about pure nickel is that it seems to minimise a little bit of the fret noise. It’s a softer material – and some players think that it’s smoother because it is a softer material than nickel-plated steel.”
STAINLESSSTEEL& PHOSPHORBRONZE
“A lot of people say that stainless feels gritty. The only difference is, really, that stainless steel is a very hard material… our fingers can maybe feel the difference in the hardness of the metal. Stainless tends to be the brightest-sounding string overall. On the acoustic side, there’s phosphor bronze, which is 92 per cent copper, seven per cent zinc and about one per cent phosphor. The phosphor was really designed… I don’t think it has much to do with the actual tonal quality of the string. I think the biggest thing is that phosphor bronze has 12 per cent more copper than 80/20. There used to be a term called the ‘NAB curve’ that radio stations used, where they would kind of boost the highs, boost the lows, and soften the midrange a little bit. That’s how I see phosphor bronze. On certain guitars it just sounds better, and on other guitars I think 80/20 sounds better, and on some guitars, I think Monel sounds better. It all just varies on each guitar. But phosphor bronze, by far, has become the most popular alloy for acoustic, at least for us.“
“There’s a subtle difference in the tone between hex and round. I’m not saying one is better or worse. It’s whatever a person likes”