Wrap, Wound, Plated?

[Sonso]

I'm looking at the various strings offered here on EB's site. I'm looking at the slinkys for my Strat, Tele, and Epiphone Dot. I see some are nickel wound and some are pure nickel wrapped. I have some Fenders that are nickel-plated.

What do the terms wrap, wound, plated all mean? There must be differences.

Thanks,
Tony

 

[DrKev]

It is confusing and they aswer as to why is due to what became an industry standard term a long time ago: "nickel wound" means "nickel plated steel wrap". The words wrap, winding, and wound are all referring to the same thing. In the Ernie Ball line, Nickel Wound is the standard slinky sets (and the coated slinky sets, which have titanium reinforcement at the ball ends).

Most strings (of any brands) use the same nickel-plated high carbon steel for the plain strings and the core of the wound strings, which is the same steel that piano strings are made from. They also use the type same nickel plated steel for the winding on the wound strings (I don't know if it's the same steel they make the cores and plain strings from). The most important difference between different brands of standard electric strings is in the "recipe" how the wound strings are made (ratio of core to winding diameters and winding pitch), which determines how we perceive the tension and tone of the string brands.

"Pure Nickel wrap" means the wound strings have a winding of pure nickel, not any kind of plated steel. e.g. the Classic Rock'n'Roll Slinky sets, these are 1950s vintage correct strings, with a warmer tone to the wound strings.

There are also stainless steel wrap strings, which are the brightest sounding.

Then, about 10 years ago, Ernie Ball broke the mould so to speak with the Cobalt Slinkys, offering (for the first time in decades) and alternative for electrc guitar players to pure nickel/nickel plated steel/stainless steel sets. The Cobalt slinkys have a Cobalt steel alloy wrap over the standard high carbon steel core. They followed that with the M-steels sets, which use marraging steel cores and plain strings instead of the usual high-carbon steel that most guitar strings and piano strings are made from. Not long after, D'Addariio introduced new strings of their own.

It's confusing, yes, but there are lots of great choices on the market, more now than ever before. They all sound and feel a little different from each other and I think it's worth spending time trying different sets of a period of a few weeks or months to settle on what works best for us.