Acoustic Guitar String Comparison

This all started when someone from Cleartone Strings sent me a note on my Wirebender Audio Facebook page asking if I’d be interested in reviewing sets of their acoustic and electric guitar strings. I’m up for free stuff, so I said “sure” and they sent me two pairs of their Custom Light 11-52 Acoustic Phosphor Bronze Treated Strings. These are not cheap strings at $17.99 a set, but I have been playing D’Addario 11-52 Custom Light Phosphor Bronze Coated Acoustic Guitar Strings for the last couple of years after almost 20 years of almost exclusively playing Elixir Nanoweb Phosphor Bronze Lights and Custom Lights and those strings are all in the same price ballpark. All of these strings make similar claims to longevity, also, with a special coating and other process secrets.

I have two Composite Acoustics guitars, the OX and a Cargo. I’ve been waffling on how I feel about the D’Addarios on the Cargo since I started using them, but I’ve been really happy with the OX’s tone with those strings. Mostly due to the added “edge” the brighter D’Addarios add to the larger bodied guitar, which isn’t an “effect” the Cargo needs.

Before I replaced my current set of D’Addario’s, I examined the strings and, especially, the coating and listened carefully to the sound and measured the output on my Composite Acoustics OX with both the pickup and a Shure KSM 141 microphone. I’m going to make a wild claim here that the CA OX, being a carbon fiber guitar will do a good job of neutrally demonstrating whatever character there might be to guitar strings. I could be wrong, so sue me.

The D’Addarios sound clean, relatively bright, and have enough bottom to make the guitar as full as a guitar this size should sound. They were recommended by my local guitar expert, Brian Stewart, Tree Strings Music, and they have been everything he said they would be, including long-lasting and a moderately different sound from my Elixirs. The Elixirs are more mellow, maybe slightly more full than the D’Addarios and that impression is true across the six strings. I have liked these strings for more than 20 years, especially during the years when I rarely played my guitars. Before using the Elixirs, my strings would often be ruined before I had an hour of playing time because of corrosion from being exposed to either the local humidity or the humidifier in my guitar case.

The ClearTone strings were a fail right out of the package. The first thing I noticed about the ClearTone strings was for the first time in the 6 years I’ve owned my CA OX the low E string buzzes like crazy. With the same gauge D’Addarios, the guitar rang clear and clean on all strings. It is only the low E that is rattling and I have no idea what that means, although the whole set feels lighter than the D’Addarios I’d just removed. [Obi-Wan-Brian Kenobi-Stewart suspects the ClearTones might be round-core, rather than hex-core strings. I guess round-core is a trendy “vintage” design, but it’s also know for being fragile, likely to come apart of the strings aren’t crimped near the tuner post, and to have problems like those I’m experiencing.] It’s nice that the guitar is more easily played, but at the cost of “clear tone” (pun intended) from all strings? Probably not so nice.

I was about to yank the ClearTone strings when I thought I saw a section of the wrap pulled apart. When I looked closely, the source of the rattling problem was obvious. The wrap (whatever that is called) at the ball-end of the string is so long (only on the A and low E strings) that it extends slightly past the edge of the saddle. You can sort of see it on the attached picture (at right). That explains why it rattles everywhere, because it is rattling at the freakin’ saddle! If I put a little bit of fingernail pressure behind the saddle, it rings clear. It’s a manufacturing/design problem and a weird one because every other string has shorter wraps, but none of them is consistent in length.

Outside of the design problem, the ClearTones are somewhat less bright than the D’Addarios and seem even a little more dull than the Elixers but with considerably less fullness of tone. In fact, I think the ClearTone strings make my guitar sound like it is made out of plastic (which it kind of is). I left them on for a disappointing week and discarded them to return to the D’Addarios. I was disappointed enough with the first experiment that I did not bother to try them on the CA Cargo.

Initially, I’d planned on doing a lot of data collection for this review: charts and graphs, screen shots of string amplitude and harmonic content, and maybe even some sustain tests. Honestly, I don’t think any of that would be useful information after what I have experienced with the ClearTone acoustic strings. Your experience may vary, but I’m just not happy enough with the initial experience with these strings to put much more time into them. 

I suspect my career as an “influencer” will be short. It’s pretty obvious that advertisers imagine that they are paying for a good review, not an honest one. Magazines have been threatened with and lost advertising revenue when a mediocre product is identified as such. All of my revenue from my blogs comes from the occasional hit my readers make to the advertisements in the blog. I have very little control of the ads (I can only tell Google and Wordpress not to use an ad I find objectionable.) and I kind of like it that way.