I now have different pickups and with different pickups you have no other choice, like you have before, other than to once again scout for the best possible strings. As such my quest began.
When I first bought my 2006 Epiphone Les Paul in the same year, it had mud buckers. The pickups Epiphone now offers are way better than what they used to and I have a “used to” kind of guitar --
-- that, truth be told, is also awesome.
With the mud buckers, what you face is a muddy sound, which means that the undertones and overtones aren’t exactly distinct and difficult to hear as separate softer tones. They sound like a bit of a mess, so you look for strings that offer depth. What I found were the Gibson Humbucker strings. These enforced clarity through iron core-strength.
Flash forward to close to the present and I installed Gibson Classic Plus ’57 Humbuckers not just on the bridge, but also the neck. These are awesome pickups that bring out a lot of clarity with their many more windings, separating the overtones and undertones instead of making them run through into each other.
I first installed the Gibson Humbucker strings on those as well, but now the emphasis on the low-E, A, and D-string was thus much on the undertones without room for the overtones that you only heard the tone you played and more low end. That wasn’t good.
So I installed britewire strings, nickel plated, that improved the resonance in terms of the overtones, but listen to other guitar players play and the noticeable emphasis on now slightly saturating undertones was still there. They did offer more high end and are fine practice strings if you need lots of cheap but good quality strings, but they weren’t what I was looking for yet.
Steppeth forward Gibson, offering these Vintage strings, pure nickel wound rather than nickel plated, and they blew me away. They offer the same nice low end that I did want for my playing, but didn’t disregard the high end to contrast whatever laid back smoothness I mean to bring.
They make tones clear and present, with all of the overtones and undertones clearly heard by the ear. I feast my ears on these strings and really enjoy using them. From here on, for me on this guitar, I will have no others.
