Anyone tried 0.007"s on their guitar?

[Simon Barden]

...because I have!

I decided to try a set after people were discussing them in another forum. I started out playing on 0.008"s, and didn't have any problems with them that I noticed, so thought I'd give them a go.

So the Pit Bull SG got loaded up with a set and the guitar was plugged in.

Two main differences to my normal 0.010"s.

1. Obviously the tension is a lot lower, so it is so much easier to bend the strings, and bend them to a higher pitch.

2. There's a lot less metal vibrating over the pickups, so output is lower and the sound is a lot thinner. Very, very thin on the bridge pickup, so much so that I really had to increase the pickup height to beef up the sound and get some bass in it. It did give the guitar a sort of 50s/60s Chicago blues sound though.

I've seen videos where players can't form normal chord shapes on these strings. I didn't find that a problem; possibly because I started on 8s so my basic learned technique was on light strings.

With 10's, though I thought I was bending up a long way, I was often only bending a semitone, especially say down on the 5th fret. With the 7s, I could bend 3 semitones there. More on the 12th fret.

The downside of bending these stings, at least initially, is owwwwww! They might be easy to bend, but the top E string is much thinner and you end up with a lot of pressure on a small area of your fingertips. They really dig in!

I'm leaving them on until a friend can come over and try them out, then I'll step up to 8s and see how they sound. An 8 has 30% more mass than a 7, so the pickup output and sound should be a lot better.

0.007"s will suit a hot bridge pickup and more standard neck pickup combination (like a SD '59 in the neck and a SD JB in the bridge) a lot better than the guitar's current slightly overwound PAF-style pickups.

But I think for me, they are definitely a step too far. I simply don't need the strings to be that loose.

[McCreed]

I've not played anything smaller than 9's and haven't been inclined to go any lighter.
I'm still happy with 10's on all my guitars. Maybe one day my old hands will require something lighter. Also with 10's on 24.75" scale length, they seem to feel like 9's to me. I'd be interested to hear what you think of 7's on a strat.

The whole 7's on a Gibson thing seems to work for Billy Gibbons!

[Simon Barden]

I'm not sure I'd risk 7s on a trem-equipped guitar like a Strat. There is so little tension in the stings that I'm not sure how well you could adjust the trem strings against them. You'd probably have to drop to two or even a one spring in order to get it pulling properly - even more so if you have it set to allow upward bends where the spring still needs to retain some tension on it when fully upwards to prevent the spring end dropping out the block.

I can't find any values for the actual string tension for the Dunlop Billy Gibbons set I'm using, but given the strings have around 30% less mass per unit length on average than 8s, the tension should drop by the same amount.

Using some D'addario string tensions, 10s total 100lbs, 8s total 70lbs and 7s total 49lbs. So you are looking at half the overall string tension with 7s compared to 10s.

[McCreed]

I didn't consider the vibrato aspect. I guess because I'm not a big user.
I have two strats set up for vibrato and the rest are blocked or hardtail.

[Simon Barden]

I stuck with the 7s until a friend had had a go on them, and them swapped them for 8s. Certainly more controllable and almost as easy to bend strings. But I still had that thin bridge pickup sound. So today I thought I’d just check its DCR, measuring at the end of a lead to save taking the cover off. Neck was 7.8k, bridge was 4.4k-ish. ‘Aha!’, thought I. Single coil mode.

Off came the rear cover and I checked the wiring. Looked OK, so I measured the DCR again. This time it read about 9.1k. The factory heat-shrink was on the joined centre wires, but it was resting against the cavity shielding to start with and I’d moved it to check the wiring before I measured. So I replaced it with my own heat shrink, making sure there was plenty on both sides if the bare wires. Back to full humbucker mode. There must have been a single whisker of wire just poking out enough to ground the centre connection and give it single coil operation.

I wish I’d checked the DCR sooner. Sometimes a visual check alone doesn’t tell you everything, and a multimeter is a necessity for fault-finding.

Now I wonder what the bridge would have sounded like with 7s!

I could live with 8s on this guitar, though I’ll probably fit 9s once these need replacing.