La Bella strings?

[Cedar51]

Anyone here have experience with La Bella 2001 classical strings? I am using the hard tension set on a Ramirez guitar. I love the brightly sparkly sound of the trebles and the bass is not too hard to press. However, I find myself tuning the guitar more often and the intonation up the neck is not perfect. I'm wondering if it's the strings or my guitar. Anyone else notice any issues with tuning for these strings? Sometimes it seems they go slightly out of tune when I play right after I just tuned them... even when they are weeks old and well stretched.

[Carey]

I've used the 2001s, but only in medium and low tension. On my guitar they
were unremarkable except for the trebles getting scratchy quickly, IIRC.
FWIW, nylon strings tend to go out of tune in response to humidity changes
much more than carbons, though I still prefer them to carbons, except for
the third string. Don't remember the LaBellas being worse than any other nylon
in that regard.. YMMV.

[Alytw]

I haven’t really noticed any intonation problems with 2001s (I also had them on a Ramirez).

Do you normally use nylon? As mentioned above, it’s pretty normal for nylon strings to go sharp when they heat up.

[Cedar51]

I do normally use nylon. I hate carbon strings. The tuning issues I'm talking about are worse than the usual changes due to humidity in my environment. I'm a teacher and one of my guitar students showed me his guitar which hadn't been tuned in a week and it was pretty close to perfect, whereas my guitar that was tuned 15 minutes ago was already sounding a bit off! (his strings were Saverez traditional low tension nylon trebles with La Bella 2001 low tension basses). I was getting frustrated with constantly tuning my guitar and hearing sharp notes so today I switched back to an old set of D'Addario high tension EJ46. The tuning stability and intonation is much better now! I checked with a tuner up the neck and it's good. The La Bella strings would read really quite sharp near the 12th fret. Strangely, even the 3rd fret C on the 5th string would be noticeably sharp.

I wonder if it was just this pack that was a bad one, or if other people have also noticed intonation issues with these strings. I really liked the sound and feel of the La Bella 2001 high tension strings.... much better than their mediums... but if they don't play perfectly in tune it's a deal breaker for me. D'Addario is a lot less bright and the slurs don't speak as well but tuning is more important to me at the moment.

[charles Tauber]

I’ve not tried la bella strings in decades and have never tried the 2001’s. Back in the day, la Bella classical guitar strings were notorious for playing out of tune. Still, some liked them and used them. I’ve not looked at them in years and have no idea if they still play untrue.

[Alytw]

That definitely sounds frustrating. The sets that I used didn’t intonate as well as hannabach or Mari trebles, but weren’t as bad as your experience. I hate carbon strings too. I have found a lot of nylon strings to be inconsistent. D’Addario, hannabach, and Mari have all been the most consistent for me.

[jrethorst]

Since I'm not yet able to afford a Buscarino Cabaret (maybe in a future lifetime), but like the tone that its players, such as Gene Bertoncini, get, I emailed John Buscarino and asked if he knew what strings were popular with Cabaret players. He replied that many used La Bella Professional:

http://www.labella.com/strings/categ...sional-series/

so I tried them. Intonation etc. was fine but they had a scratchier, sharper tone than I liked.

John R.

[labellastrings]

Hello Acoustic Guitar Forum Members,

Thanks for your input. We're not aware of the issues mentioned in the thread, but if you ever have any product issues, feel free to contact us directly at [email protected] so we can address them ASAP.