Cobalt Strings

[jfb]

I was going to try these but a local technician said he felt they were doing something to his frets. I don't remember what something was but it was a negative. I stayed away. I still use Elixir's. Anyone here experience anything like this?

[DRM_777]

I was going to try these but a local technician said he felt they were doing something to his frets. I don't remember what something was but it was a negative. I stayed away. I still use Elixir's. Anyone here experience anything like this?

There is a difference between "feeling" like they are doing something and them actually doing something though..... and from the information I have read from the long term users, there have been no reports to this effect.....

[DRM_777]

Well, I restrung this morning and had about 20 minutes to play before lessons started.

My initial response is that there is definitely a tangible difference in tone clarity and output, both in a good way. They definitely seemed to enhance my metal/rock tones with no need for tweaking, and for clean tones, especially my country, I was able to use my bridge HB instead of the middle position to get a nice glassy tone where as before, using the bridge HB on it's own had been far too bright and no amount of tweaking really seemed to help.

In regards to how the strings feel, well, I love how they bend.....not that I had any issues with bending before, but the Cobalt's really make bending in general a more pleasant experience if that makes sense.

My biggest let down at this point, is the feel of the wound strings, particularly the 6th and 5th, feel kind of rough to my touch and at some points, it almost felt like my finger tips were getting a bit stuck....... though I reckon this may just require a period of adjustment to get used to them....

So looking back at my initial response in regards to the Cobalts I notice that it was the 12th December I put a set on.

Well today, I restrung......with another set of Cobalts, but in all honesty, I didn't have to, the only reason I did was because I got Gorgomyte in the post this morning and I wanted to treat my frets/fingerboard.

If these had been regular Nickel Slinkys, I would have been changing them about now anyway, maybe even before now if I had been playing more.

However I reckon I could easily have left the Cobalts on for another week or two, possibly even more. They looked only marginally duller than when they first went on and they felt just as nice with no feeling of any tarnishing to the touch which is my personal annoyance when it comes to old strings. There was no significant lack of sound performance either.

Most definitely impressed with the results and I think Cobalts are the way forward in regards to Electric strings!

[QueenCityGuitars]

I was going to try these but a local technician said he felt they were doing something to his frets. I don't remember what something was but it was a negative. I stayed away. I still use Elixir's. Anyone here experience anything like this?

I seem to have heard something similar. I'm an Elixir user as well and have a set of Cobalts waiting to be used but I've been leery about trying them. I'd be curious to hear if anyone has experienced issues with their frets after using Cobalts.

[Boogie]

I seem to have heard something similar. I'm an Elixir user as well and have a set of Cobalts waiting to be used but I've been leery about trying them. I'd be curious to hear if anyone has experienced issues with their frets after using Cobalts.

No adverse issues seen on my guitars, Brian. And they've been on both for almost a year now. In all honesty, Cobalts initially seemed to wear my callouses differently than normal nickel Slinkys, but I'm used to them now and it's not an issue.

[aduayer]

No issues with me either.

[CoreyT]

Me either, they are on all of my guitars.

[Brad737]

I'm trying a set on my R7 Goldtop. I like them. But here's my normal string setup. I use 9s on Fender-scale guitars, 10s on Gibson-scale, but I like the D'Addario .095 set on my PRSi. I find they give a fairly familiar feel across the various guitars. The big complaint I have is that the Cobalts don't come in the .095 gauges.

[Harker1440]

I put a set of cobalts on at the beginning of December and played 4 shows with them as well as some practice time. The strings are very nice and slinky. Changed them last week and went back to my usual DR coated strings and WOW what a major tonal and playability difference after one show the drs had fret divots and showed a lot of wear and were not as loud as the cobalts. The cobalts never did show much wear and I could probably left them on. I restrung the siggy last night with cobalts again. I figure in the long run I will save about $100 a year on strings by using cobalts since im getting twice the string lifetime than I normally do with other strings I've used