EFW74 : Daddario EFW74

I like these strings a lot. They have a distinctive sound quality - punchy, not twangy, mellow rather than bright. In guitar terms, a bit more like the sound of an arcthop jazz guitar rather than a flat picked dreadnought. For this very reason I suspect that they will not be for every mandolin player.

They come up to tune very quickly and don't need time to play in - ie. to lose that hollow sound that so many new strings have. I think this is connected to their distinctive sound quality - their sound emphasises the mids rather than the trebles and basses.

Perhaps surprisingly, they are very responsive - hammer-ons, pull offs, grace notes and especially slides all come out much more easily than with roundwound strings.

There is one downside - the strings are far heavier than I expected and are pretty hard on the fingers - this somewhat counterbalances the ease of play (slinkiness is the usual word) that one would expect from flat wound strings. I'll see how I feel about this in a few weeks time and if I haven't got used to it might look into lowering the action a bit.

Highly recommended.