New Coated Strings from D'Addario

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When you’re the best, you don’t rush new products to the market—because only the best new products will do. That’s why, even when other coated strings were making news, D’Addario kept quiet, redesigning and testing their own coated strings, already in development. And the results of that patience are more than worth the wait.

D’Addario’s new EXP Extended Play Coated Acoustic Guitar Strings are nothing less than amazing. They’re coated, but they feel, look and sound identical to traditional acoustic guitar strings. The secret to D’Addario’s success with EXP strings lies in the manufacturing, of course. An ultra-fine layer of EXP coating is applied to the phosphor bronze wrap wire before the wire is wound around the high-carbon steel hex core. Because the wrap wire is coated first, and then wound onto the core wire, the string retains the feel and sound of a regular phosphor bronze string, sounding fresh and bright. The "new string tone" lasts three to four times longer than traditional guitar strings. This is a vast improvement over strings that are wrapped first and then coated, as they tend to feel strange and sound ill.

Hundreds of professional musicians were enlisted to test D’Addario EXP strings over the last year, and the strings were unanimously praised as the best new guitar string innovation to hit the market since D’Addario introduced the first Phosphor Bronze string in the 1970s. "Our new EXP Coated strings are simply amazing," says D’Addario Brand Manager Peter D’Addario. "These strings sound great – bright, like traditional phosphor bronze acoustic guitar strings. Their corrosion and tarnish-proof features keep their tone three to four times longer. Everyone who tested them begged us for more sets, and people they’d told about the EXP strings were calling us asking for them, but we only had so many prototypes to go around. We’re expecting a very strong response to these strings."

Five sets of EXP Acoustic Guitar strings will be offered initially: EXP15 (extra-light), EXP26 (custom light), EXP16 (light), EXP17(medium) (all retail for $23.99), and EXP38 (12-string, retails for $39.99). Each set matches with the corresponding D’Addario EJ acoustic sets (e.g. regular EJ15 = coated EXP15).

For more information, visit their web site at www.daddario.com.