Stringjoy Broadways (10-46) Pure Nickel Electric Guitar

If you’re looking for the most flexible string around, well boy howdy, have you ever come to the right place…

Our Super Lights Broadways bring back a much-loved but since discontinued gauge combination from the past that were once a key ingredient in the original Brown Sound, and a favorite of the Sultan of Swing himself, among many others.

Vintage warmth, plenty of attack, and more flexibility than a single, unemployed 23-year old. That’s what this set is all about.

Much like the famed Nashville street from which these get their name, our Broadways are steeped in tradition, but have undergone a major facelift.

Two years ago I came up with the idea to make a vintage original guitar string, the idea was to make a string that was identical in every specification to a set of strings you would have bought in the 1960s. I knew this meant using round core wire and pure nickel wrap wire (the original standards before hexagonal core and nickel-plated steel wrap wire were popularized), but I wanted to take it a step further and duplicate the core to cover ratios (the relative thickness of the core and wrap that make up a string) of classic string sets to get the feel as period-correct as possible.

So, I purchased dozens of sets of strings from the 1950s and 1960s and took them apart to study the ratios and winding techniques used to make them. After researching as many strings as I could get my hands on, I went about carefully reproducing them in every way on our equipment, and finally strung up the first set on a guitar.

And guess what? They sounded terrible. None of that vintage warmth was present, they were super tinny—and stiff as all get out.

Turns out, there was no golden age of strings. Manufacturers back then used as thick of core wire as possible, and as thin of wrap wire as possible, in order to keep costs low (steel core is relatively cheap, but pure nickel wrap wire is super expensive). This lead to a stiff, thin sounding string.

So I went back to the drawing board and set out to make a set of strings that sounded and played the way I had expected from the vintage strings. This meant going the opposite direction—using a strong but thin steel core a ton of pure nickel wrap wire, and compressing the wrap wire with twice as much force as normal in order to get as much nickel as possible on each gauge.

And after another several months of testing, I landed on the perfect recipe and our Broadways were born. They have tons of warmth, but don’t sacrifice high-end presence. They’re super flexible, but hold tune like nobody’s business. Without a doubt, these are my favorite strings I have created thus far.

-Scott Marquart
President
Stringjoy, LLC