MARTIN Retro Acoustic Guitar Strings MM11

I’ve heard that a couple famous folk musicians used monel strings on their instruments back in the ‘60s. These have a beautiful mellow sound that feels like it’s letting the voice of your guitar out without imposing their own tone. I love these on my Yamaha FG. My only complaint is that I broke the first and third string very easily when tuning up! I had brought them up to pitch once already but had to loosen them to work on the nut. When I tightened them up again they snapped. And unfortunately you can’t buy individual strings, so I had to buy another complete set to replace those two strings. Thankfully, I reached out to Martin’s customer service and they provided me with a replacement set at no charge as a courtesy. I would happily buy these again and look forward to trying other strings from a company that stands behind their products.

Those who love the warm focused sound of their Mahogany guitars will find these strings a great compliment to your instruments. Anyone looking to maybe tame a little “scoop” and add some warmth and focus to a Rosewood guitar should give these a try as I’ve found they do just that. I had been going back and forth between Martin SP Phospher/Bronze and D’Addario Custom Light gauge Phospher/Bronze strings for years on my acoustics and I like both, but now I’ve switched to these Nickel alloy strings and love their warm and focused sound and feel.
A couple things I should mention…
The spring gauges on the CL and L Retro’s differs from those on the SP CL’s and L’s in that the B, D and A strings are .001 thinner in the Retro’s and the overall tension is about 4 pounds lighter than the SP’s making the Retro’s slightly easier to play.
In addition to the Retro’s, I am also using the D’Addario NB CL’s. I think the NB’s are a little warmer, fuller, more complex sounding and actually improve with a week or two of time on the guitar. Their wrap material is Nickel/Bronze vs Nickel/Copper for the Retro’s. The B and E strings for both are plain steel but the carbon steel in the D’Addario’s I think is fuller and more even sounding. The gauges and tension are the same as their PB counterparts and they are the lightest in tension between the two brands. They are $12 vs $9 for the Martin’s. Love both brands though and the Retro’s are great strings.

The Martin Retro Acoustic Custom Light 11 strings were just what I needed to make my very different looking, selfbuilt electric-acoustic lap steel guitar sound fantastic! While it is basically a hollow-body acoustic guitar, it uses a very thin, hot-wound custom-made humbucker pickup that sits about 1/4 inch below the strings. Other brand acoustic strings (80/20 bronze; phosphor bronze, etc) did not work well with the pickup. I didn’t feel that electric-guitar strings would work well either. I’ve never used Martin strings before (even though I owned a Martin guitar before) but some research made me think these monel-nickel acoustic strings would work well with the pickup AND the acoustic aspects. Hoo-wee! I’ve got bright, beautiful sound with ringing highs and bassy lows. Almost too bright and almost too much sustain (I hear your thoughts: No such thing as too much sustain). Purely acoustically the guitar is pretty tonal but not very loud (kinda like an unplugged hollow-body jazz guitar) but with the hot pickup, these strings, and a six-pedal chain and two amps to tame this creation, it is pure sonic joy! I’ll probably try other Martin Retros in different gauges as I learn my setup. Bonus: They tune up quickly (less intial stretch?) and stay in tune. Pricing is good this retired, thin-wallet dude.

Normalmente uso las elixir Nanoweb, que son muy buenas cuerdas y duran mucho. Quería probar otras cuerdas simplemente para probar otro sonido (considerando también que duren más que las normales por que soy de los que las oxidan pronto por eso uso Elixir normalmente).

Lo primero que quiero decir es que estas cuerdas son SIN DUDA de buena calidad. Algunos comentarios por ahí hablan de baja calidad, marketing, etc… Son de buena calidad, lo vez en la construcción y acabado de la cuerda y también lo notas porque apenas se estiran, en cuanto las pones ya quedan bien afinadas (como las Elixir u otras cuerdas buenas).

Sonido: me gusta el sonido, es más de medios, los agudos y los graves no son tan prominentes, y es cierto que suena un poco “vintage”. Proyectan menos que las Elixir, menos volumen y menos ataque, pero me gusta como suenan, tienen buen sustain y el sonido es delicado.

Tacto: Son un poco más finas que las Elixir (hablo de las 0.11), y por el coating que tienen deslizan menos y hacen un poco más de ruido al deslizar pero nada fuera de lo normal.

Durabilidad: no lo sé aún ya veremos…

Conclusión: Son buenas cuerdas, de calidad, y si quieres probar un sonido distinto al que tienes adelante. No sé si las usaré toda la vida, pero por ahora me gustan.

Update: Estuve tocando varios días las cuerdas y grabando en estudio, y la verdad es que suenan increíble. Me encantan, no sé cuanto me durarán, pero el sonido es especial y adictivo.

I like to experiment with different strings on my Blueridge acoustic guitar and thought I would try these. I have to say they are fantastic, it took me a short while to get used to the different look and feel (they look like electric guitar strings) but once they settle the tone is great and is different to bronze in that it is less zingy and more warm. I love them!