Strings: Durabilty, Stability, and Sound

written by Barry Hunn

DURABILITY

Modern steel banjo strings are a marvel of resilient strength, musical expression and responsiveness. Though very durable, they do lose their elasticity with time and use and can break when they are old and brittle.  In general, your banjo will remain the most responsive, bright and clear when you change your strings every one to three months.  Keeping your strings clean by wiping them with a metal cleaning cloth or a clean, absorbent cotton cloth, will help prevent corrosion on the strings.  Corrosion is caused by finger oils, acids and humidity.  Some players’ body chemistry creates very little corrosion and others corrode strings almost immediately.  If your strings corrode quickly, you will just need to wipe them clean after every playing session and it will help to use a treated metal cloth or a commercial string preservative.

If a string is bent sharply, or “kinked” it will usually break at that spot.  Sometimes if the string is bent sharply where the loop end meets the loop winding, the string will break.  Several string manufacturers suggest wrapping three to five wraps around the tuning peg shaft to reduce the tension on the sharp bend of the string as it goes into the hole of the tuner shaft.  When the string comes right from the hole in the shaft, the edge of the hole, if not perfectly smooth and round edged, will “kink” and or cut the string.  Having 3 to 5 wraps eases the tension on that bent string coming out of the hole in the tuner shaft.  Any sharp metal edge on a banjo tuning machine hole will break strings.  Playing extremely hard with strings that are too light for a hard playing style will break strings.  Every now and then a string might have tiny manufacturing damage and it will break without any other symptom like sharp edge, accidental kinking etc.   Thankfully, this is pretty rare.

STABILITY

Keeping the banjo stable and preventing it from going out of tune, is not necessarily an issue of string quality.  When strings are brand new, they cannot be very stable because they are still stretching. After a few days or so they usually stretch to their limit and stay in tune better.  

One common but little known issue that causes tuning instability is a string nut that is too tight.  The string binds in the nut, so when you tune the string, it “sticks” in the notch.  Then when you pluck the string during playing, the string gets pulled free of its stuck position but then its pitch changes because it is not being held at the same point on the string.  This is easily fixed in most cases by rubbing a sharp pointed number 2 pencil into the string notch right on or underneath the string.  The graphite powder from the pencil allows the string to “slide” through the notch with less or no binding.   Since the string isn’t getting stuck, it doesn’t change when the banjo is being played. 

Since a banjo bridge is not glued down, this is another factor that can de-stablize a banjo’s tuning.   When the banjo head stretches, the bridge sinks deeper into the head and the tuning changes.  The temperature changing causes the head to tighten when cold and loosen when warm.   Walking from a warm backstage to a cooler center stage can be really distorting to a banjo’s tuning.  Playing in the shade and having the sun creep onto your banjo will throw the tuning off immediately.  These nut, bridge and head issues affect the tuning stability of banjo strings but are not a string issue and we’ll address them in another article. 

SOUND  

Manufacturers tend to use similar machines to wind strings or twist the loops onto the ends.  This by no means does not make all string brands the same. When someone tells you that they are, that is absolutely not accurate.  

Manufacturers use subtly different techniques for twisting the loop on the end of the strings.  They choose a specific kind of music wire for its alloy and tensile strength.  The wound strings are wrapped with different winding tension, different diameters of wrapping wire, and various alloys of brass, bronze, nickel or stainless steel.   Each has its own character of sound and responds differently on each banjo and to the touch of each individual player.  One brand of strings which creates the perfect feel, tone, and response for one player might be unsatisfying for someone else.

Tonal Description of Different Wound Strings:

• Brass wounds are bright, yet warm in sound.  They wear down quickly from plastic and metal picks.
• Bronze wounds are darker or less bright in sound.  They also wear down quickly from picks.
• Phosphor bronze is fairly bright, cooler, not quite so warm in sound. Wear is about the same as bronze and brass; maybe a little longer lasting.
• Nickel wound is not as bright, but lasts much longer than bronze or brass. This is the most common wound string on most banjos and in most banjo string sets for four and five string banjos. 
• Stainless steel wounds are brighter than nickel wound, last very well, but aren’t all that common.  At this time, I haven’t seen a stainless steel wound banjo string in years, though I’m sure they are out there.   

When it comes to choosing a particular brand of strings, it is best to try as many brands as possible on your banjo with you playing.  Playing a brand of strings on someone else’s banjo can’t help you because no matter how consistent banjos might be built, they are still too individual in voice and character to make such a choice in string brands.  Having someone else play your banjo for you to listen to only tells you what that player sounds like with those strings and your banjo... you don’t sound like that. 

String gauges offer some degree of sound predictability on most banjos.  However, terms like “light gauge”, “medium gauge”, “heavy gauge”, etc. can be confusing. The gauge of the string is the diameter.  Strings are usually measured in thousandths of an inch.  For example: .009” means, nine thousandths of an inch in diameter.  .010” means ten thousandths of an inch in diameter. When you see a number followed by a “W” that means the string is “wound” or wrapped with a layer of wire.  So, a .022W means, a twenty two thousandths of an inch “wound” string.   Five string banjos tend to have one wound string.  Tenor and plectrum banjos tend to use two wound strings and six string banjos tend to have between three and four wound strings.  

It is best to choose strings based on actual string diameters, and not on the package description of “light gauge” or “medium gauge”.   One brand of a 5-string set will show a “light gauge” set as having strings with diameters: .009, .010, .012. .020W, .009.    But another brand will show a light gauge 5-string set as .010, .011, .014, .021W, .010.   These two “light gauge” strings will have different “feel” and respond very differently on your banjo.  So if you buy a different brand of “light gauge” you might be getting something completely different than what you like.

If, after many trials, you find a set of strings that you really like, keep the label with string gauges on them, or write down the string gauges and put them in your banjo case or your wallet.  Now, when you buy a set of strings of a different brand with those same string diameters in the set, you will comparing the brands accurately because the strings are the same diameter.

How do the gauges affect the sound?

Light gauge strings, or thinner diameter strings in general,  tend to have a balance which is pronounced treble, less mid range, and a little more bass.  This description is relative to the string set itself and it’s overall character when played.   Medium gauge strings tend to have a more pronounced mid range character with a little less high frequency and a little less low.  

Having said this, it does depend quite a bit on the banjo and player.  

Light gauge strings tend to be too soft or too “noodley”  (like cooked spaghetti noodles) for players who play hard and or grip the neck hard.   Players who play very hard, often need thicker diameter strings so their attack on the string doesn’t pluck the string so hard that the vibration is indistinct or unclear.  It’s kind of like carving a Thanksgiving turkey with a too thin knife.  The blade bends and it’s hard to cut a straight line.  But, using a slightly thicker blade, the knife falls through the turkey. However, cutting through a vine ripened tomato is probably easier to do with that thin bladed knife.  The heavy blade might tend to squash the tomato because the fruit is so much more delicate than the turkey.  (blade sharpness is important,.. I know… don’t nit pik….) Players with a lighter attack on the strings, often like the fullness of sound of lighter strings. 

For playing in a totally acoustic environment with no microphones or pickups etc, the heavier strings will tend to “project the sound” a little better than lighter strings.  When playing in a large hall or church, this might be helpful. Heavier strings can be played harder than light gauge for more projection.

For recording or playing into a microphone or where volume, or projection, is not a requirement, lighter strings offer a rich balance of bass, treble and midrange.

For players who are starting out on the banjo, it will take time to “understand” what you want in your string gauge choice.  It is something that only comes with experience and experiment.   Many top professionals own multiple banjos because they like one set up for recording and one set up for stage performing.  But until you have enough experience, you can’t really know which way to go.  It has nothing to do with “being good enough” but everything to do with “knowing what you want.”   

We tend to set up most of our banjos with a lighter gauge string set.  Our light gauge set is .010, .011, .013, .021, .010 first string through fifth.  This combination of diameters works for many players both for finger picking and clawhammer styles. 

But when you are starting out, what YOU want is to practice more.  We suggest you stay with the light gauge strings that came on your banjo until you know exactly what you want to change.  If you have lighter weight banjo or a cheaper import banjo, the lighter gauge strings help give the banjo more “liveliness” and will usually be more satisfying.  Heavier strings tend to dull the sound of lighter weight banjos…which is ok if you want less ringing and sparkle in your banjo sound.  Some clawhammer players like that sound. 

Yes, you can buy individual strings to make your “own” string sets to your own custom gauging. Many good banjo stores have a great selection to choose from. You must remember though, it is the practicing and the love of banjo playing that makes the player great, not the string diameters.  If during your banjo training you discover a need for one string to be a little stiffer or lighter, then by all means, try some different strings.  But until it becomes really obvious, just have fun making music.