Ernie Ball Mammoth Slinky String Review

Hey folks!

 

I've been looking long and hard to find the perfect set of strings for my Chapman ML1 Baritone guitar.

 

After ordering a few sets by various companies from Thomann, I took about a half a year to thoroughly test them all.

My winner: The Ernie Ball Mammoth Slinky!

 

Here's why:

 

Directly after opening the pack and stringing them up they felt insanely nice.

There's something about that fat .62 6th string that's just so inherently chuggable. It sounds fat as hell and clear as a bell as well.

The set continues with a .48 5th string that feels sturdier than some highway bridges. It's equally clear and fat sounding.

To be perfectly honest, I've never heard a more balanced low-end on any baritone guitar than with these two bottom strings.

 

The set looks like this:

12

16

24w

34

48

62

 

The odd one out being the wound .24 3rd string.

I legit thought it would get in the way sort-of of the usual feel of chords and fingering, but quite the opposite happened!

I'm super happy with it, as you get all the spank out of the string that you get from wound strings on a string that would ordinarily sound relatively thin.

I suppose it makes sense to wind the d string (d in standard baritone tuning b-b) as the d string on a standard tuned regular scale guitar would also be wound.

This allows for some epic fingerstyle playing on the baritone guitar with an added bass string, so to speak.

I've found it also rounds out the middle frequencies, which is especially helpful with super fendery clean sounds and tweed sounds, but also helps push your heavy riffage out of the speakers with more legibility.

By that I mean every note is distinctly there, it's not muddy at all, especially on octave heavy riffs it sounds like there's two guitars playing at the same time.

 

It's the single greatest investment into my solo music career, apart from the baritone guitar.

 

The most amazing string control ever on tapping licks.

I'm mostly a rhythm guitar player, although I have been known to occasionally bust out a solo, and for me having 4 wound strings is a bigger deal than I can emphasize.

It's just cool to have all the strings I regularly use feel the same under my fingers.

 

Granted it does take some getting used to on solo runs, but after about 30 minutes or so I felt right at home.

 

Ernie Ball have knocked it clean out of the park.