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Duotone string gauge recommendation


marc9889

Question

Gents, it’s a happy day. I bought a Duotone out of Las Vegas yesterday (should have it by Friday), and it’s my first Duo in 9 years. Should I go with Elixir strings or some other brand, and what gauge? It’s just been so long, I don’t remember what I was using before. Thanks!

 

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Welcome back to the Duotone club!  I have Slinky 10s on mine, and I like them.  I read the wound 3rd string discussion, but my Duo intonates just fine with the unwound 3rd, and I prefer the ease of bending 10s on this instrument, even though I use 12s on my jazz guitars.

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On 2/6/2021 at 1:15 PM, marc9889 said:

Gents, it’s a happy day. I bought a Duotone out of Las Vegas yesterday (should have it by Friday), and it’s my first Duo in 9 years. Should I go with Elixir strings or some other brand, and what gauge? It’s just been so long, I don’t remember what I was using before. Thanks!

 

6844149C-6504-4984-9DEC-2D8D3B65F675.jpeg

Nice snag, I'm glad someone here scored it. Were you able to convince the seller to ship the guitar? Have fun!

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5 minutes ago, topekatj said:

Nice snag, I'm glad someone here scored it. Were you able to convince the seller to ship the guitar? Have fun!

Thank you! I'm very excited to have located one, and this one is never getting away. (Lesson learned.)

I'm not 100% sure this is the same instrument that was on Craigslist, but it would be a heck of a coincidence is it wasn't. The gentleman I bought it from is a dealer (hobby level) in Vegas. I think he probably bought it from the Craigslist guy, and resold it to me. He was willing to ship it, and though it cost me a little more money, I got the exact instrument I wanted. To make it a bit more interesting, he is Bob Seger's guitarist, and I've always been a big fan. Nice guy. Could have spent hours talking about whatever came up.

What really got me interested in in a Duo in the first place is also interesting. I went to see Great White at a really, really small venue in Huntsville, Alabama back in about '94. This place was call The Vapors, and I'd say it wasn't a sliver over 4000 square feet. Mark Kendall was playing a 3 hole Duo with a natural finish, and it was the best sounding live rig I had ever heard, at least for a micro-gig. I never saw him play it again, on video or otherwise, and I never understood why not. It was the holy grail of tone, a super light instrument, and looked very cool. 

 

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The factory recommendation was D'Addario XL110W's.  That's Slinkys with a wound third in Ernie Ball world.  It's not so much an intonation issue as it is that an unwound third tends to "blare/glare" with respect to the rest of the set.  A Duotone Custom was my primary gig guitar for years and I found that many of my probelms with trying to get a passable "acoustic" sound were solved with an .018W.

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