October 7th, 2013.

After our little run through New England, we raced back home to perform on the music stage of the Baltimore Book Festival. Good times were perpetrated plus or minus truly obnoxious sound issues. Even better than playing, we got to catch some of Les Hatley’s set before us. That man’s guitar playing is just… hwah.

Russ Haire capturing us at the Baltimore Book Festival!

Well, a couple of years ago I’d discovered the Martin SP+ strings. They were awesome and would last an average of 20 – 25 hours of playing time before I started having breakages – and they kept their tone for all that time.

They discontinued them in February of 2011 (?) and I’ve been searching for new strings ever since. I’d found some Love with Martin Lifespan XPs (the successors to the XP+) which would last about 12 – 15 hours for me, but then they switched over to the Cleartone coating and that time dropped to under five hours. I’ve been working with D’addario EXPs for a while (I tend to like their tone a bit more), but I see breakage after 4.5 hours of playing.

SO – I’ve ordered a bunch of different types of strings. I’ll document the experience here – just in case anyone cares!

Of course, if I was doing this properly, I’d buy 10 sets of every string and take an average… but I can’t afford to be properly scientific… so here we go! (I might perpetrate science when I narrow down the field – at the moment I’ve got 14 sets of strings to work through)

On September 29th, 2013 I restrung my CA-OX with a set of D’Addario EXP16s. I got approximately 4.5 hours of playing time* out of them before breaking the D. Snapped up at the nut. Stay tuned… especially if you’re nerdy about stuff like this.