Flat wound strings

[bobo]

Wow, that's a lot of information, thank you all so much.
And Ed, my hubs is a carpenter (which I suspect is a bit of the amateur guitarist dream), and we don't have a computer at home (because as I said he spent our savings on the 4001!!!), so he can't sign up at the moment. But I am sure he would be very happy to let me post a photo of his new baby.
Does anybody know any reliable stockist of any of the brands you mention for the UK?

[edski]

Ahhh, I see, Oni. Understood. Yeah, I wish I could be a little more handy around the house, and certainly it would be a fantasy to be able to build a guitar!

Not sure about the string selection in the UK, but plenty of forumites are there...and at least TI's are made in Europe (Austria, I think).

[charlyg]

Time for a dumb question. Does low tension equate to floppy? Meaning they move back and forth further, and/or slower?

[david_schwab]

If a string has more mass, it can be tuned to pitch at a lower tension. Being that it doesn't have to be as tight to be in pitch, it feels looser. Maybe.

But some strings feel loose (floppy) and are actually high tension. I found this to be the case with GHS Boomers. Even though they felt looser than the D'Addario XLs I usually use, they were higher tension, since I had to tighten my truss rods after I put them on.

So low tension does not necessarily equate to floppy. Depends on how the string is designed I guess.

[lars]

Isn't it opposite? The thicker the string is, the higher the tension? Try to tune your G string to the pitch of the E string, that's floppy!

[rickfan63]

I think it all depends on the core wire used in the string. The smaller the core wire, the lighter the tension. The reverse is true too, so I've read.

[jps]

There is a lot more to string tension than it's nominal guage measurement.