Just curious what you D-25 owners are using for strings. It’s such a loud, boomy dread especially when amplified. I currently have John Pearce PB 12s on mine, but have tried many others. Opinions?
I used to advocate EJ-16's under the philosophy that "If it's good enough for Guild it's good enough for me"; and the Guild L350 strings were in fact D'Addario EJ-16 (with the gauge exception I noted below) from at least some time after '74*, but now think the real question is: "What're you trying to accomplish?"
I recently decided to see how much I could change the voice of my F65ce (maple archback shallow Grand Auditorium body, quite jangle-y) by not only changing strings from pb .010's to silk and steel .011's, but dropping tuning a whole step as well.
It was like having a whole new guitar to play with.
Currently I run Ej-16's on both my dreads but I buy an extra PB025 single "G" and sub it in to exactly duplicate the Guild L350's they were originally shipped with.
I do keep the D25 tuned a whole step down but the D40's in standard "E".
The D25's gonna get something different next time around though, just for the sake of seeing what happens to its voice.
Maybe some GHS Silk'n'Bronze 370ML (12-54) and back up to "E" since their tension'll still be lower than pb's.
Lately I'm observing what happens to sustain when top tension's lower.
Seems to be louder but a bit shorter duration, strictly from subjective observation.
**D'Addario went to market with pb in '74 and Guild was first to offer pb as standard strings on their guitars.
It's possible they even offered 'em before D'A went to market with 'em on their own, as D'A was a Guild supplier even before '74, but the only I've seen evidence doesn't call it "Phosphor Bronze", it's a '72 price list showing L350's as "Special Bronze Alloy-high copper content":
http://www.westerlyguildguitars.com/files/pricelists/72-7.pdf
Note the wide variety of strings they offered in '
72, also be aware that I've seen owner's manuals pictured here from late '70's even to early '80's that indicated at least 2 different dreads were shipped with M450
mediums.
That was supposed to be a "built like tank" era for Guild so suspect the top on a '76 could probably handle the tension if your fingers can, on the other hand, I suspect the neck-set angle'll stay good a lot longer with lower tension strings.
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