bensonp wrote:By worse performance, do you mean they didn't sound good either? Or just didn't last long? Could they be good for someone who changes their strings real often?
Yeah, sorry Pete. My last post could have been a bit more helpful. I was on about my 7th beer when I wrote it (not an excuse, just a fact), and tonight I'm only on my third, so this should be a bit better.
They just (for lack of a better word) died, seemingly overnight. I was encouraged at first. Like I said, they seemed to take a bit longer to stretch than the regular Martin SPs, but it seemed like they were going to hold tone OK.
I usually play off an on a couple of hours per day, and am not very well-disciplined at wiping the strings down afterward, so that may have something to do with it.
But what I noticed is that while normally there is a gradual decline in tone, these just seemed to go from "good" one day to "bad" the next. I picked up my D-35 one evening and hit a few licks and then thought "what the heck is going on?" I looked at the strings and checked to make sure that they were in tune (they were), but it was like I had picked up a totally different guitar.
Bottom line: I wouldn't recommend them to anyone for anything, especially not to someone who changes strings as often as they change underwear because of the price. For that I would go with something much cheaper, such as Topdown's recommendation for JP's, which are about a third the cost of the Lifespans. (I haven't yet tried JPs, but the cost is appealing.)
I hope that clarifies it a bit for you.
Anyway, this evening I put on my first set of Elixir Nanowebs. So far, so good. We'll see how they are in a week or so.
'Nom
"Just because you've always done it that way doesn't mean it's not incredibly stupid." - Despair, Inc.