Coated Roundcore??

[personatech]

I like the suppleness of roundcore strings such as Newtone Heritage or DRs. I also like the feel and lack of squeak of coated strings, especially Elixer Nanowebs. However, I can't seem to find coated roundcores. DR? Nope. Curt Mangen? Apparently not.

Are there strings out there that fit this description? If not, why not?

[brandall10]

https://www.acousticguitarforum.com/...d.php?t=482045

Unfortunately no US dealers.

[TBman]

Although not coated, the Newtone Double wound round cores were nice. Now I can't seem to find anywhere that has them in stock.

[121]

I like non-squeak, round core strings.
For me coated strings still squeak, just not as bad as un-coated round wound.
The only non-squeak strings I've found are flat wound.
IMHO the best round core non-squeak strings are Dogal Nightclub V25 80/20 flat wound.

This Italian gentleman produced a youtube video demonstrating a set of Dogal Nightclub 80/20 flat wound strings.
Playing of these strings starts at 6:45.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49DUkSx17uM

[personatech]

Thanks, all! Shame those Blacksmith strings aren't available in the US.

[dwasifar]

[Wildgift]

Originally Posted by dwasifar

I shall dream of this tonight.

[AcousticDreams]

I have never used this product, Liquid Polymer by Dr.

But hey for $9.95 on sale, might be worth a shot. They say nothing about string noise, only about increasing string life. But it is Polymer...so who knows.

If you try it please report back and let us know the results In this thread.

https://www.stringsandbeyond.com/drstlilipost.html

[KarenB]

A Polymer can be so many things:

Polymers abound in nature. The ultimate natural polymers are the deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) and ribonucleic acid (RNA) that define life. Spider silk, hair, and horn are protein polymers. Starch can be a polymer as is cellulose in wood. Rubber tree latex and cellulose have been used as raw material to make manufactured polymeric rubber and plastics. The first synthetic manufactured plastic was Bakelite, created in 1909 for telephone casing and electrical components. The first manufactured polymeric fiber was Rayon, from cellulose, in 1910. Nylon was invented in 1935 while pursuing a synthetic spider silk.

Who knows what this stuff is.

[JayBee1404]

Originally Posted by TBman

Although not coated, the Newtone Double wound round cores were nice. Now I can't seem to find anywhere that has them in stock.

You need to order direct from Newtone. Since Malcolm Newton retired, the new owner of the business, Neil Silverman, has taken a different business-model route, and the best way to obtain Newtone strings is by ordering directly from the business.

Bear in mind that Newtone are a small-scale business - just the owner and, I believe, two employees, working out of a small industrial unit, about an hour’s drive from my home - so they don’t have the administrative efficiencies of the large-scale manufacturers, emails can be slow in answering because the same guys who do the admin work also make the strings! They can supply the common gauges and string-types from stock, but the less common strings have to be made to order so, if you’re ordering something ‘exotic’, delivery can take some time. And of course, Covid-19 social-distancing rules here are having an effect on their operation.

But for sure, what you’ll get are superb, hand-made strings and personal service.

https://newtonestrings.com/

[dwasifar]

I did a little Googling. Most reviews of the String Life treatment are positive. But it does say you have to reapply it after each time you play. So it's clearly not the same as a coated string like Elixir.

I'm highly skeptical. "DR's Stringlife™​ liquid polymer coating bonds to strings by causing the positive charge of electrons in your strings to attract to the negative charged polymer. This creates a process called electrovalent bonding." An electrovalent bond is a real thing, but it's also a really common thing, not a special high-tech whiz-bang invention. For instance, table salt holds the sodium and chlorine atoms together with an electrovalent bond; nobody had to invent it in a lab.

Basically they're claiming that the string alloy is going to form a chemical compound with the liquid. I can't say for sure that that doesn't happen, because we don't know what molecules are involved, but we do know that strings are made out of all sorts of materials and it would be a very odd coincidence if this stuff is able to bond identically with all those different kinds of string.

I think it's more likely this is just a temporary coating that dries on the string and has to be renewed because it gets rubbed off. I'm imagining it as being something like Rain-X or a synthetic car wax.

Hmmm... Now I'm wondering what would happen if you put Rain-X on strings. That stuff is pretty tenacious.