La Bella S1046 Double Ball Steinberger Electric Guitar Strings 10-46

Set up perfectly on my Steinberger Spirit.

Best price for name brand strings I have found

Hi, strummers! If you want your guitar to sound like a sitar, buy these twangy strings. I am a great fan of D'Addario and also a great fan of LaBella products. I play professionally and I use both brands extensively on my nine electric guitars and basses. However: I have gone to a great deal of effort to configure my Steinberger so that I can make it sound like anything from a mellow Gretch Country Gentleman to a turbo-drive Billy Gibson special. One of the things I did was to install an unusual combination of Duncan pickups whose frequency response characteristics are at the opposite ends of the EQ spectrum, so that I can instantly switch from a very mellow jazz sound to an in-your-face hard rock sound. Another thing I did was to resist the temptation to change my strings for eight years (over the objection of my Strings by Mail salesman) so that I could achieve that coveted mellow sound on the rare occasion that I need to play a bossa nova or standard. That all came to an end when I broke my D string at a gig. I grabbed my spare D'Addario string set and replaced the D string. It stuck out like a sore thumb next to my well-aged strings. Frankly, it sounded like I was plucking a SPRING rather than a string. This is not to disparage the new string, but it illustrates the extreme difference in tone between the new string and the very old strings. No bossa novas were gonna come out of my guitar that night! The next day I called Strings by Mail to enquire about double ball strings that might be less twangy and springy-sounding. My friendly salesman said "The only alternative to what you have now is LaBella." I ordered two sets, hoping for a more rounded tone, because that is what I experienced with other LaBella products. Well the bad news is that they sound exactly like D'Addario double ball strings. Or the good news is that they sound exactly like D'Addario double ball strings if that is the sound that you seek. If you are NOT like me, then you crave the sound of a Fender Stratocaster, and with these LaBella double ball strings you will get your wish. As for me, I will need to either convert my Steinberger so that I can use single ball strings, or I will need to master the art of mounting a second ball on conventional strings. Then I will have a much wider choice of brightness because I can access a world of conventional guitar strings. To reiterate, the problem here lies in my special need for a guitar that can emulate a jazz guitar as well as a hard rock guitar. There is no problem at all with LaBella products. Cheers!