D'Addario, 4 XL Chromes Electric Guitar Strings, Light, 12-52 (ECG25)

D’Addario XL Chromes Electric Guitar Strings deliver exactly what they promise—a buttery-smooth feel and rich, mellow tones. The flat-wound design minimizes finger noise and makes sliding effortless, while the polished stainless steel wrap adds a layer of sophistication to your sound. Perfect for jazz or any style requiring warmth and depth, these strings maintain excellent intonation and durability. Highly recommended for musicians looking to elevate their tone with ultra-smooth playability!

I'm sure why I bought these and had no idea what I was getting into. I like to play a jazzmaster heavily overdriven through a boss blues and then a fuzz pedal, preceded by a wah, through a fender Princeton. Sound is like heavy david gilmour. These strings are very different from anything I've used in the past, which have always been cheap ernie ball wound strings. Here are the cons (after a couple days of playing): They feel weird - very unnatural without the regular wound feel. My fingers do not slide as well on them - they feel sticky, kinda like a suction cup feel. Also, the G string (well I tune a step down, but you know what I mean). - is really weird. It is not your typical thiner string. It is a fat one, and it's really hard to bend it up a half step. I mean, it IS possible, but you have to bend it really far to bring the note up a whole step. Weird. The B & E are bendable, yet thicker than I'm used to.When I first installed these strings, I was like WTF, and actually was thinking to rip them off and replace them. But, I didn't have any other strings on hand, so I just played my guitar like usual, jamming out to some blues, classic rock, psychedelic backing tracks. Then I began to notice - the guitar's voice had been significantly altered. And here is the reason I'm not really sure what I'm gonna do, and I may even leave them on, or buy a second guitar, maybe a strat, which I can set up with regular strings --- the Jazzmaster, with these strings, changes sound so much, it's unbelievable. It adds balls, weight, grit....it almost makes it sound like what I'd imagine a reallly good Les Paul might sound like (that's a guess). For anything that involves non-soloing - playing chords, playing songs, there is a significant improvement in sound. The guitar now, through the setup I'm using, has without a doubt the best sound I've ever been able to produce in my life. I'm going to have a hard time taking these strings off this thing because of that. I was a little concerned my fingers might take too much of a beating trying to bend these fat ass strings, but idk - I think I'm gonna try to limit my playing to ~30 min / day while my fingers adapt and stick with these, and like I said, maybe get a second guitar that's set up with regular strings ( nickel wound 10 - 13 - 15 xxx ). Here's another thing - so an issue I have when soloing is I am going in the direction where I play so many notes I kinda sometimes feel like I'm just jabbering away and making sounds without making musical statements. What these thicker strings do for me, is they kinda make it harder to play quite as fast, but each note you do play will have more character, so it encourages me at least to slow down a little and really enjoy the articulation??? ( the character ) you can put into less notes. In other words - my playing actually sounds, to me, more professional, more like what I hear on great records....bottom line, these are friggin amazing, yet uncomfortable in ways, strings.

I keep going back and forth between roundwounds, half-rounds, and flats. Don't be afraid of these heavier gauge flats. If you have an assertive style of playing, as I do, they're great. You can lower the action and still get no buzz. They're not "pitchy," as lighter strings are, and yet you can still achieve enough vibrato with your left hand. Chromes don't sound "plinky" on my archtop like the rounds and half-rounds do, and I love it. Again, I go back and forth, but these 13-56 Chromes are wonderful -- a great string!

I am a beginning electric guitar player and I learned that on a bass guitar, that flat wound strings are super comfortable on the fingers, especially for slides. This particular set is still a little too heavy for my fingers and when I installed all of these strings as they come, the tremolo system required extra springs and the tension rod had to be tightened in the neck. I did not like the way it played with the extra tension that made the strings hard to bend and hurt my fingers.My special trick and best solution to turn these into wonderful, easy bending, light playing strings is to not use the #48 heaviest E string. Buy a separate .008 or 0.009 gauge string to use for the first E string and then shift all of the others over. See my marked up package in my photo. This trick gives you a wonderful 8-38 or 9-38 smooth set with the following:1-E 8 or 9 (purchased separately)2-B 103-G 144-D 20w5-A 28w6-E 38w48w - not used

These strings have a very nice low end and are great for heavy, grungey riffs. However, I find them less than optimal for normal playing, as they are difficult to bend and the high end is not very pronounced, making solos sound dull, and making playing riffs on the first three strings sound muted. I also made the boneheaded mistake of putting them on a floyd rose bridge meant for much lighter strings, so the string action on my guitar was very high with these strings. I would definitely put them on a different guitar with a fixed bridge though, as I do really like the grungey tone of the lower two strings, and they are smoother than standard strings so slides are much easier. Perhaps a hybrid setup would be optimal on something like a Les Paul. On any other 24 fret guitar though, I would stick with Ernie Ball Super Slinkies.

When he plays, he actually plays bass (his thumb) leads the other fingers and percussion strumming with his finger nails. The total sound is amazing. notice how thik these strings really are.

I continue to try various flat wound strings and come back to D'Addario Chromes. They hold tone well and always are consistent in quality. The fat tone is evident, especially in the 10-48 set, which helps my older fingers! The lighter strings help for bending, though the repertoire I play on a big D'Angelico doesn't call for too much bending. They also are widely available, so it is easy to pick up spares. Highly recommended.