Martin Guitars Retro MM-12 Light

I was looking forward to testing these strings. Normally I like strings with a warm, "vintage" style tone so I had high hopes for these Martin Retro Monels.

Unfortunately I didn't like them very much. I was expecting them to have a warmer, mellower tone.

At first they were extremely bright. Not in the same way as a bright set of phosphor bronze or 80/20 strings. It was more like a fizzy thing in the high frequencies that somehow seemed disconnected from the rest of the tonal spectrum. This nasty fizz disappeared after a couple of hours of playing but the tone was still far too metallic sounding for my taste. Once the strings was broken in it wasn't a particularly bright tone but more like a "tin can", honky kind of tone. Not my cup of tea. I gave them a week of regular playing before I gave up and installed other strings instead.

To be fair they were at least different from any other strings I've tried but sadly they weren't for me.