Fender 150L

The Fender 150L strings are designed to give vintage blues and rock tone, combined with modern manufacturing standards. The ball ends of the strings are colour coded. These are pure nickel strings. Fender designed them for use in the blues, jazz and classic rock genres, although anything goes and I certainly do not fit into any of those categories. I have been using 009 gauge strings since the 1970s and have previously also used Ernie Ball, Gibson and Rotosound in particular. The Fender 150L seem to suit me well and they have an uncovered third string. I play very lightly with a nylon plectrum half a millimetre wide at the tip. With modern equipment, you only need to tickle the strings anyway, though many people can be heavy handed. These work well in tremolo systems like on a Strat, but I have not tried them in a Floyd Rose fitted guitar.

I generally prefer pure nickel strings for a more vintage tone, but the end up being quite expensive. I've tried Ernie Ball and Pyramid nickels in the past, the best being the Pyramids, but someone gave me a box of Fender 150's a few years ago which seemed quite good. Unfortunately, the QC wasn't great at all and I had many failures, including wound strings with the wind missing! After an email conversation with Fender UK they admitted they had a quality problem, but were being made elsewhere now and he sent me a box for free. Happily, they've been fantastic since and considering the price I'll continue to use them.