“QUALITY STRINGS ARE A GOOD START TO GREAT SIGNAL FLOW” Words Henry Yates
As director of Engineering & Technology at Ernie Ball, Chris Harrington supplies the electric strings to A-listers from Kirk Hammett to Slash. Here’s his pro advice on how you can string up like the stars…
Scan the packaging of Ernie Ball’s iconic Slinky electric sets and you’ll find an endorser list to die for. From Clapton to Vai, via Petrucci and McCartney, that A-list artist roster is the stuff of marketing gold – but as director of Engineering & Technology Chris Harrington points out, it’s every bit as important to the Californian firm to arm musicians with advanced tone tech.
How much thought should guitar players put into their choice of electric strings? “Strings make a real difference. Gauge, construction, materials: all of those are significant factors in the experience you have with your instrument. Strings are the front line of your interaction with the guitar, and they dictate where things go from there. So a simple investment in quality strings is a good start to a great signal flow.”
What can you tell us about the modern Ernie Ball range? “Well, everything compares to our traditional Slinky strings, which are what started it all. But for us, it’s about putting more options at players’ disposal, to complement their guitar without having to switch up pickups or change amp settings. First, there’s a differentiation in materials. For example, we offer a number of wrap-wire materials for different tonal responses and flavours. It’s like pairing wine with food, finding the right string materials for your guitar and amp. In 2012, we came out with the Cobalt Slinkys, then the M-Steel Slinkys. That moved on to other products like the Paradigm, where, in essence, we took all the technologies and insights we’d gathered over years of research.”
Tell us more about your preferred alloys and their benefits for players… “The material that’s become our baseline is nickel-plated steel, wound around a high-carbon steel core – and that’s fairly balanced, not too midrange-y, bright or dark. But if you want to step in one tonal direction, we have pure nickel strings. Those have a warmer sound, just a smidge less brightness, so that would complement a brightsounding guitar. But then if you step in the other direction, you have stainless steel, which is more on the bright side, with an aggressive sound that’s great for darker instruments. Our cobalt alloys afford more of a high-definition sound, with clarity and a focused midrange. So if you want your humbucker guitar to have more of a single-coil or Filter’Tron quality, then cobalts can step in that direction. They’re great for high-gain situations, too, where you want note definition and clear pick attack.”
Ernie Ball offers so many gauge combinations. How do you think that helps players? “Well, take our Ultra Slinky sets. Kirk Hammett from Metallica was actually using that gauge combination for some time – basically mixing up two sets of our regular Slinkys, 10s and 11s – before we offered that gauge combination as a single set. We want to give players the flexibility. So, for example, instead of having to choose between Power Slinkys and Skinny Top Heavy Bottoms, you could go with the new Burly Slinkys, which is a hybrid of those two sets. And then the Primo is a great example of a true ‘in-between’ set. It goes from 0.0095 to 0.044, splits the difference between our 9-42 Super Slinkys and 10-46 Regular Slinkys. And for anyone who asks if that half-gauge really makes a difference, my answer is that the sum is greater than its parts. The difference between a 0.009 and 0.0095 is very small. But translated across an entire set of strings, it accumulates to something pretty noticeable.”
What advice would you give on choosing electric strings? “It kinda comes back to three things: gauge, materials and construction. So if you haven’t played a certain alloy, why don’t you try that out? It’s the same with gauge. Go up or down, see how you feel about it, instead of just going with the traditional 0.010 to 0.046. If you’re a heavy-handed player, it’s probably not wise to go with nines. Many players – myself included – like to have some tension or ‘fight’ to the strings. Slash is a great example of someone who routinely plays 11s, and Stevie Ray Vaughan reportedly played with up to 13s at times. A lot of that is to do with tone, too. Thicker-gauge strings won’t sound quite as snappy, they’ll be a little darker but perhaps a little fuller. Or you could take a hybrid approach – and our Skinny Top Heavy Bottoms come to mind – where there’s wire gauges on top to support intricate lead lines, but you’ve also got heavier gauges on the bottom strings to provide tension and resistance for heavy riffs. But it’s worth trying everything.”