Optima Jazz Swing 1947FEL Chrome Flatwound Electric Guitar 10-49

Strings By Mail always gets the order right, delivers quickly, and has a wide variety of unusual or hard-to-find strings.

. . .but don't let that stop you from trying them--they may become your first choice! I tend to take a set with these general gauges and simply swap in a .013 for the top string on an archtop, and get that beautiful, blooming, warm, old-school sound. With these, though, the basses are a bit too smooth for what I do, and so there is just no little bit of "grab" like I like to have on a flat wound string. I realize that some will prefer this smoothness, as it contributes to the "thunk" that many are looking for on, say, an ES-175-style guitar, and so that's why I say try them, and they may work out for you. I will say that on one of my archtops with P-90s, these smooth basses come through the amp sounding like an upright acoustic bass--something I'm enjoying experimenting with while I have this set on this guitar! I do like that they are nickel, as I prefer a nickel flat versus a stainless-steel flat (be prepared to raise those bass-side pole pieces a little bit if you're used to running steel flats).