Strings

[John Kinn]

A short question : What mandolin string brand do you recommend? I just bought a set of ghs Bobby Osborne Signature set. Anyone tried those?
Thank you.

[Tim2723]

Well, it mostly depends on things like the type of mandolin you're playing, your playing style, and the music you want to make. Strings are, for the most part, pretty cheap and always expendable. Try them all and choose your personal favorite. While there are lots of sets endorsed by famous players, you can bet that the string manufacturers have not re-invented the science of metallurgy to suit anyone. Experiment and have a blast doing it!

[Arnie Solomon]

I really like the John Pearse phosphor bronze heavy gauge mandolin strings. They are not really a heavy gauge set, except for the first string which is a .012, instead of the typical .011 on medium gauge strings. The rest of the string gauges are .015, .026, and .040. I like having the heavier first string because I play hard and don't break them. I also really like the way the bass end of my mandolin sounds with these strings.

[Randy Smith]

A short question : I just bought a set of ghs Bobby Osborne Signature set. Anyone tried those?
Thank you.

KJ,

Nice quality strings, like other GHS sets. However, the guaging seems unusual to me. From high to low it's .11 (usually a medium guage), .16 (heavy), 24 (light), and 38 (medium-light). The .16 A string seems out of place, imo, for someone who wants lighter low strings, but I'll assume GHS has its reason for this grouping. Hope the 260's are working for you. D'Addario J73's have the same guage D and G strings as the Bobby Osborne's do but have lighter trebles.

R.S.

[fishtownmike]

I use D'Addario 11 to 40 gauge. I like them. I use D'Addario strings for guitar too. Now for the mandolin i haven't been able to experiment since these are the only brand mando strings that any of the music stores around my way sell.

[mandroid]

More spillover Eh?:confused: thread here seems rather mis sorted, looking as disarrayed as my apartment ,
NB there's oodles of string opinions in Equipment section .

:popcorn::popcorn:

[Michael Lewis]

The GHS Bobby Osborne set (A 260) has probably the most even string tension of any set on the market. It varies only about 2 lbs. across all the strings. I asked Bobby once how he came to select those string gauges, he said they were pretty much what he would end up with when buying single strings to make a set when no packaged sets were locally available. They are a great set.