Rickresource Rickenbacker Forum

There seems to not be much information about strings on Beatle guitars, or generally information about the strings used in the 60s, or did I miss it? Does anybody know? Which sizes, which brand, which material?

Early in the 60's they probably used Hofner, Selmer or Monopole flat-wound strings in heavy guages, all that were available in England or Germany at the time. Later on American strings in lighter guages and roundwounds became available though more expensive. I doubt we'll ever know, they probably don't remember or care much themselves.

You know, that's pretty much true of any band, even today. You really don't hear much about the kind of strings people use or the gauge.

Sometimes the strings are the most interesting point on a guitar to me. You can get so many different sounds. I used flatwounds on my 330 for some recordings, sweet warm sounds, but in a live situation they seem to noy be the right sound to me. When did roundwounds become popular? Was it all flatwounds on the Beatles albums?

I asked about the change to roundwound strings on another guitar forum I frequent. Here's one of the responses...

"It was sometime in the late 60s; I remember that John Entwistle had started using them in the Tommy sessions or slightly earlier than that. He had
some sort of role in the development of roundwounds after the My Generation album came out, mostly because when they were doing
"Substitute" and "My Generation" and some of the other songs where he was really cranking it, he was breaking flatwounds left, right, and center.
For MG, he was using I think Danelectro Longhorn, broke every string on it the first session. Had to go out looking for replacements, found out
that there were NO SPARE strings of that scale length in the country, hadda go buy another (50 quid) longorn, break strings, and repeat the
process 3-4 times. I like roundwounds more."

More than likely, the Beatles did use Flatwound strings on all but maybe the last two albums, but I don't know for sure.

My recollection is that by the time I was playing in the late 60's roundwounds were the norm and flatwounds by that time were regarded as old-fashioned. Roundwounds were available in the early 60's but regarded as acoustic strings, flatwounds were for electric guitars. I think the fashion changed gradually as better and lighter roundwounds became available.

I would say that John and George started using Roundwounds after Clapton and Hendrix I would guess the white Album was a Roundwound album, the Beatles got a big order of Fender product around that time Paul got a Bassman 100 amp and John got a fender deluxe amp, George got a Rosewood Tele and a Fender twin? they got a Fender Rhodes and some Fender pedals... (no Rogers drums for Ringo ?) my guess is that they got a supply of Fender strings, Ive seen pictures of Pauls 4001s with blueish green thread (windings? nylon? whatever you call that stuff on the ends of strings) the strings in the picture looks like Fender's, this is just a guess ...It sounds like Paul used flats all through the Beatles and on some of the early Wings stuff...Someone on the forum said they set the 4001s up when they worked at the factory around the time of the 75 Wings tour so they would know what strings he had them...

To my recollection, by far the most popular guitar strings in Liverpool, in the MerseyBeat era, were Gibson 'Sonomatics" which became available around 1960-61, which was when the British restrictions on the post-war importation of American goods was lifted.

That they were American and also Gibson, was reason enough to ensure their popularity. Also, as light gauge strings were not available, merely a concept to us, what we did was use a banjo 2nd as our top 'E' string and then use the regular strings 1 - 5, discarding the low 'E'. Incidentally, it was Gibson 'Sonomatics' that we restrung John's Rick 325 guitar with after putting on the Bigsby unit, in Hessy's music shop.

I wonder if The Beatles, while on tour, changed their strings on a regular basis? Was it that big of an issue to them or did Neil Aspinall and Mal Evans maintain their gear on the road??

Scouser,
Forgive my ignorance, but were Gibson Sonomatics flats or rounds?

Tony,

They round wound strings and had a pretty good sound. They also lasted quite a while although, being on the road, I changed my strings every few days, out of habit.

Thanks Chris. So much for the Beatles only used flats theory!

When the First 325 was sent in for repair, it had 2 roundwounds, 3 flatwounds and one accoustic guitar string. They used whatever they had! This has been confirmed and is in Andy Babuik's book about Beatle Gear, coming out next month. Get the book!