Wound vs plain string tension

[CanserDYI]

Just remember they aren't magnetic so you can't use them on electric
I've used these however. They are extremely nice strings and my acoustic strings of choice. I like both sets - one set is kind of intended to make classicals more like a steel string, the other intended to make steel strings more like a classical - that's the one I like. I can't remember which is which right now but it's pretty obvious from the contained material details.

I agree having a wound third run slightly less tension than the plains can be good to ease up the harder bending issue. I think a lot of the bending difficulty given it has to travel a larger distance, actually comes from the fact that you have to start moving the other strings next to it more, too.

This actually brings up a question I've been meaning to ask, maybe this is the right place, sorry to derail.

How the hell do you guys bend huge bends without hearing the "smack" of the string into the next one over that you have to start bending too? I can bend just fine, but I find this happens often to me and if I'm using delay, which duh, i'm using delay, it comes through the amp as a little click. Any suggestions?

If i have to do anything differently I'm out

 

[Winspear]

This actually brings up a question I've been meaning to ask, maybe this is the right place, sorry to derail.

How the hell do you guys bend huge bends without hearing the "smack" of the string into the next one over that you have to start bending too? I can bend just fine, but I find this happens often to me and if I'm using delay, which duh, i'm using delay, it comes through the amp as a little click. Any suggestions?

If i have to do anything differently I'm out

Careful muting is all there is to it, can be tricky! As a general rule of thumb, try and have your picking palm muting anything lower than the string you are playing, and your fretting hand muting anything higher than the string you are playing, at all times. Then with bends, I find perhaps just a little extra being deliberate about consciously contacting the other strings with your bending fingers in a way that pushes them out of the way and releases them back down with constant support and no slipping occurring.

 

[ixlramp]

Strings that have less tension would be less likely to break as you're not putting as much stress on the string.

Not necessarily.
To reduce tension you have to reduce mass, and so reduce gauge, which then reduces tensile strength.

For a plain at a particular pitch, tension and tensile strength are both proportional to gauge squared, so the breakability of the string remains the same whatever gauge you choose. This is an interesting behaviour of plains.
For a wound, whether the string becomes more or less breakable at lower tension depends on how the core to gauge ratio changes. At best, a wound might become only slightly less breakable at a lower tension.
There is a limit to how small wrap wire can be. If this limit is reached, as it probably would be with a thin wound, then the core gets smaller relative to gauge, so a lower tension wound becomes more breakable.

I think a rope core would give you more flexibility & a higher tensile strength.

Lower tensile strength, because the air gaps in the core reduce the cross-sectional area of material.

 

[jyym]

Now some questions for you ...
What guitar are you ordering? What brand of strings are you choosing gauges from?

With your current guitar, have you yet gone through the process of trial-and-error experimentation to find your optimum custom gauges? I get the impression you do not know what string tensions you like? You cannot design a set for the new guitar by theory, the only way is to discover what you like first and then transfer that as best you can to the new guitar.

for reference, this is what I decided on as a final set up. it remains to be seen if this "on paper" set up translates to a pleasant playing experience.

Eb 25 010 = 13.87 lbs
Bb 25.22 0135 = 14.44 lbs
Gb 25.44 017 = 14.68 lbs
Db 25.66 026 = 16.59 lbs
Ab 25.88 035 = 17.03 lbs
Eb 26.1 048 = 17.65 lbs


I should note that the calculations for the wounds were done with regular D'Addarios, and I will be getting NYXL, so the actual tension of the wounds will be very slightly less than what's listed here, on the order of hundredths.

 

[Oscar Stern]

Not necessarily.
To reduce tension you have to reduce mass, and so reduce gauge, which then reduces tensile strength.

For a plain at a particular pitch, tension and tensile strength are both proportional to gauge squared, so the breakability of the string remains the same whatever gauge you choose. This is an interesting behaviour of plains.
For a wound, whether the string becomes more or less breakable at lower tension depends on how the core to gauge ratio changes. At best, a wound might become only slightly less breakable at a lower tension.
There is a limit to how small wrap wire can be. If this limit is reached, as it probably would be with a thin wound, then the core gets smaller relative to gauge, so a lower tension wound becomes more breakable.

Lower tensile strength, because the air gaps in the core reduce the cross-sectional area of material.

A Solid Steel core for super thin wound strings would work better & they would have to be like Pressure Wound (kinda like Flexible Flatwound Strings) so that they're flexible & strong. Oh I actually restrung my Mandolin w/ Thomastik Infeld Precision Mandolin Strings which are Flatwound Strings designed essentially like Violin Strings: the gauges are 10, 15w, 21, 33. I think if they made the super thin wound strings as Flexible flatwounds, you'd get a higher tensile strength string that's easy to bend, & also less finger noise.

 

[Oscar Stern]

I was able to create a super light gauge string set w/ a Flexible Wound G String. I took a set of 9-42 Gauge Super Light Strings (XT Coated Nickel Wound) & substituted the 16p Plain Steel G String w/ the thinnest wound string I got my hands on, a 17w (NYXL Coated) & they recommend keeping the set tuned down a half step to Eb Standard. Super thin wound strings thinner than 17w would actually have to be coated so that they would last longer. So those of you who are familiar w/ the EXP Coated strings, the XT is the new generational improvement to that process, they're now able to get a much thinner & more durable coating as well as coat all of the strings.

 

[Oscar Stern]

How about Hexcore Hexwound Strings?

 

[Chris Bowsman]

How about Hexcore Hexwound Strings?View attachment 103233

Does anyone actually make a string like this? Everything about it seems terrible.

 

[Oscar Stern]

Does anyone actually make a string like this? Everything about it seems terrible.

It's not terrible anymore due to improvements. Bogstreet (possibly D'addario & other companies too) makes amazing Hexwound Strings:https://bogstreet.com/products/parabolic-acoustic-guitar-strings-phosphor-bronze-coated-hex-wound which are Roundwound Strings that are essentially shaped like a Hexagon, but the corners of the Wrap Wire have been slightly polished & smoothed so that they're gentle on the fingers.

 

[Chris Bowsman]

It's not terrible anymore due to improvements. Bogstreet (possibly D'addario & other companies too) makes amazing Hexwound Strings:https://bogstreet.com/products/parabolic-acoustic-guitar-strings-phosphor-bronze-coated-hex-wound which are Roundwound Strings that are essentially shaped like a Hexagon, but the corners of the Wrap Wire have been slightly polished & smoothed so that they're gentle on the fingers.

What is the benefit? Having any sort of edge to the string is going to cause the frets to wear quicker.

 

[ixlramp]

I doubt the Bogstreet strings have hex shaped windings. Their other acoustic string product is also called 'hex wound' but features a cutaway rendering (top left image in gallery) of a standard hex core string https://bogstreet.com/collections/a...itar-strings-phosphor-bronze-coated-hex-wound
'Hex wound' just seems to be an uncommon way of writing 'hex core'.

That hex shaped string image posted above is present on Russian, Ukranian and Japanese (not English) Wikipedia pages for 'String (music)' https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Струна_(музыка)

Translated text is:
"Strings with a hexagonal braid consist of a hexagonal core with a wire (usually round) tightly wound around it, which at the same time repeats the shape of the core. This solves the problem of the braid twisting around the core so it won't spin and slip out from under your fingers. Some say that the hex core improves the sound due to the tighter bond between it and the braid [6]. The disadvantage is that the relatively sharp edges of the string are less comfortable for the fingers and wear out the fretboard and frets even faster than the round braid. Hex strings are most commonly used on bass instruments (such as the bass guitar)."

The [6] citation link for that text translates to 'D'Addario FAQ: What are hex strings and why are they better?'. A dead link to an old D'Addario FAQ.
But this seems suspicious.
'Hex strings' is sometimes used as another way to write 'hex core'. I suspect the FAQ was probabaly referring to 'hex core' strings because it refers to 'hex strings' as if they are a common D'Addario product. I suspect someone read this, misunderstood it and added hex shaped strings to various wikipedia pages.
The text above reads like a misunderstanding of hex core strings.

So there is a lesson about believing Wikipedia.
I have never seen any other evidence of hex shaped strings, has anyone else?
Seems impractical as a string in several ways and very difficult to wind. The wrap wire, that is often quite thick relative to the core, would have to be very forcefully sharply bent around every corner, wrap wire tension during winding would not be strong enough to do this.

 

[ixlramp]

@jym the tensions of your chosen set look good.

 

[Oscar Stern]

What is the benefit? Having any sort of edge to the string is going to cause the frets to wear quicker.

Actually they'll be Flawound to prevent that

 

[Oscar Stern]

Hm? ... this seems to make no sense.
A string of a particular gauge has approx the same tension whether it is plain or wound.
The durability of a string is not determined by tension alone, but also by tensile strength.

You seem to be stating a wound string of the same gauge will have far less tension, it only has slightly less tension, see the D'Addario tension chart pdf.
More importantly, a small gauge wound string has an extremely thin core wire compared to the same gauge plain steel string, so the break tension is far lower.
The result is that, for smaller gauges, changing them from plain steel to wound as you propose actually makes them far weaker, not more durable as you claim. This is why plain steel strings are used in guitar sets.

Nothing Octave 4 Plus can do can get around this limitation, they can only practically make perhaps one more string in a set wound with their special high strength steel.
See the earlier post, they can make a wound .009 but it cannot reach E4 due to the extremely thin core wire.

They would have to refine it so that they can make a wound .009 that can tune up to E4. It would have to be a Flexible Flatwound.

 

[Chris Bowsman]

Actually they'll be Flawound to prevent that

I ask again, what would be the benefit of this over a typical hex core string?

 

[Oscar Stern]

I ask again, what would be the benefit of this over a typical hex core string?

The Flat wrap wire will make the string stronger by filling up all the air gaps.

 

[Chris Bowsman]

The Flat wrap wire will make the string stronger by filling up all the air gaps.

How does filling up air gaps make the string stronger? When a string breaks, it's the core that goes first.

 

[jyym]

@ixlramp I don't think I asked this before, but its probably better to express the tension difference for feel between wound and plain in relative rather than absolute values. that being said, what do you consider a good percentage difference?

 

[ixlramp]

The Flat wrap wire will make the string stronger by filling up all the air gaps.

This is a claimed advantage of a flat winding, not of a hex shaped wound string.

As mentioned earlier, although a flatwound wrap wire layer has more material, a wrap wire layer has insignificant strength because a spiral of material is very easy to stretch, it is a spring. The strength of a wound string is determined by hte strength of its core wire.

But anyway ... hex shaped strings do not exist

 

[ixlramp]

I don't think I asked this before, but its probably better to express the tension difference for feel between wound and plain in relative rather than absolute values. that being said, what do you consider a good percentage difference?

Yes, for most or all aspects of strings, relative values should be used.

A 'good' tension jump depends on many things and the player, so the player should find their optimum by trial-and-error.
But ... doubling the tension is probably not optimum, as in https://www.rotosound.com/product/dz10/ (probably the worst designed set i have seen)

I cannot state a personal preference for a tension jump for a fourth interval, i last used standard or fourths tunings in 1996.