Guitar strings are a very personal choice for the guitarist. There are various metals, gauges, and styles to choose. Does a guitarist go with flat-wound or round-wound? Coated or non-coated? The choices that we have as musicians can be perplexing and even confusing for a noob.
In talking with my contemporaries in the guitar world, I find most of them fit into four different buyers of guitar strings. The first I will call the mimic. This is the person that will buy whatever strings their guitar hero uses. The second is the loyalist. The guitarist that has been using the same strings for 30 years and has no desire to try anything new or change. Then there is the third category, the discount shopper. I know many guitar players that will play whatever strings are on sale at a given moment.
The fourth group is the one I fall into, the adventurer. I am constantly trying new brands and styles of strings. Seeing I have a large stable of guitars I find some work better with some guitars than others. Then some brands cut across many different guitars and styles of playing. Today I want to introduce you to a new player in the arena of guitar strings, Morley.
Yes, I am taking about the same Morley that has been making guitar pedals since the 70’s. Full disclosure I am a Morley fanboy, I jumped at the chance to strap on these strings and give them a try.
I installed a set of .09’s on my Les Paul Traditional. I would call this guitar my number one seeing it is my gigging axe and spends the most amount of time in my hands. While my playing style is very eclectic most of my time, these days is spent with my band which is deafening, aggressive and heavy. With many of my rhythms, technique goes out the window. I am no longer playing the guitar; I am assaulting it. My strings bear the brunt of these attacks.
When playing these strings for the first time, one thing I noticed was they settled in very quickly. I am not sure if it is the hand-wound process or the type of nickel wire Morley uses that attributes to this. Whatever it is I like it, there is nothing worse than a set of new strings that go out of tune halfway through the first song of the set. After a month of bashing power chords and string bends that take me to the limits of my finger strength surprisingly I have not broken a single Morley string. More impressive is after hours of playing they are still retaining their beautiful bright tone. My chords sound full and clear with a distinctive ring that cuts through the mix.
You, acoustic players, fear not, Morley has strings for you too. I gave a set of .11s a run on my Ibanez Euphoria acoustic guitar. The first thing I noticed was how loud they were. These strings project the tone of the guitar. I also found they respond very friendly to playing dynamics. Their brightness gives me a great palette for different muting techniques and picking styles. They came alive when applying fingerstyle picking and raking them with the nails on the back of my fingers.
It doesn’t matter which of the aforementioned string buyers you are. Give these strings a try. You can find out more about Morley strings and all of their products on MorleyPedals.com, the Morley/EBtech Facebook page or the Morley Pedals YouTube page.
