Thomastik-Infeld CRK124MT Med Tension Classic Guitar Strings, Set

Trebles sound great. Basses went bad after 5 days.

Very quick and professional service, very satisfied

I tried these on my 2009 Fernando Mazza spruce top. I had tried the Dogal Maestrale trebles, but they seemed to be capable of only one sound - a nice pianistic tone, but without much flexibility. This was almost acceptable as I mostly play Bach these days, butI missed the different tones you could get out of nylon strings. (Also, the Dogal strings just felt bizarre, like I was playing fishing line, not guitar strings.) For the more traditional Spanish part of the repertoire, the Dogal's would not work very well for me.

The Thomastik trebles give you back some of that missing tonal flexibility. It's not quite nylon, but it is not as inflexible as pure carbon. For polyphonic music, these trebles are excellent, but you can also produce a nice, round tone with rest stroke for melody lines in the standard repertoire. And the projection is quite amazing, allowing you to dial back quite a bit on the attack and still get a rich tone. They can be bright and thin, but after a few days of playing them I found the correct feel and was very happy. I did not like the basses very much. They were too brassy, especially the D string. I took them off after two days and replaced with Savarez basses and I have to say I am very pleased. I just wish Thomastik would make treble-only sets available as the price tag is pretty steep. I like the Thomastik trebles the most, but for 1/3 the price I can get the Savarez Corum 500PR sets with rectified nylon and be most of the way there. They do appear to last very well. I have been putting a lot of hours on them and they still sound the same, although I do sense a slight stiffening in the string. I wonder if others have experienced the same.

So, excellent product, but deduct a star for price and for basses that are not good enough.

I tried a set of these last year and Thomastik-Infeld's description of the trebles is accurate: powerful, yet warm. They sounded wonderful on my Ruck guitar. The basses sounded great when I first put them on, but seemed to lose their richness after 2 or 3 days. I'm trying them again in case that was a fluke. I'm sticking with five stars, though because the trebles really were fantastic. These strings took longer to settle in at pitch than the strings I usually use (Hannabach 728 MT).