Shoulda stuck with Elixirs

[gscratch]

Alert Readers will remember that I put a full set of Cleartone on my 456ce when three of the original strings (Elixir, I assume) broke the first time I played it seriously, about nine months ago.  I suspect that it had been hanging on the wall at the dealer for more than a year.  It hasn't needed new strings yet, so I haven't had to make a decision. 

My 310ce came from Elderly with a new set of Elixer on it.  When I bought it, I asked them to throw in a set of Martin Marquis since I'd had experience with them on my Guild, and had never heard of Elixir.  When one of the Elixers broke, I put on all the Marquis, and hated the sound.  I stopped what I was doing and went and bought it a set of Elixir and haven't looked back.

There are two Taylor dealers in town: one recommends Elixer, the other Cleartone (for the same instrument).

[George]

After much experimenting, my 816ce gets Elixir 80/20 on the bottom four, and Martin Lifespan on the B and E.  My Koa Mini seems to like the Elixir PB as recommended by Taylor.  My J45 got Martin SP for many years, but I recently switched to Lifespan after having some leftovers from the experiments on my 816 - the Gibson really likes the Lifespan PB's.  My other 2 acoustics are normally strung with Martin SP's and I see no reason to switch - I rarely play them acoustically and the tone is always tweaked when I amplify them, so string choice for those boils down to playability rather than clean tone.

[dhodgeh]

Another vote for John Pearse strings, specifically the phosphor bronze ones

The Elixirs are not bad, but I get a lot of mileage out of the JP strings, and they have just a bit of something that does make them sound better on my guitars.

D

[Thumb Picker]

Big fan of John Pearse strings,  These uncoated strings can go up to 6 mo on my guitars, maybe because most are short scale with less string tension.

I'm also a big fan of John Pearse
I use the Jazz med on my Taylor 614

Seems to last well and finger pick really nice