DR Strings Acoustic Guitar Strings, Black Beauties - Black Coated, 11-50

The tone of these strings will definitely jump out at you the first time you hear them. It's a very clear tone with a nice bass-heavy percussive attack. Open-string chords were full and resonant without sounding "jangly" like many steel strings. Barre chords on the lower part of the fretboard sound great as well. As you move up the neck toward the body, the barre chords will lose some of the resonance and sound a little more muted. It's ideal for open-string chords and barre chords with the root up to about fret 7 or 8 or so (* for my taste, anyway). That works great for me at a solo singer/songwriter gig. For playing lead over another acoustic, there are better options. If you play a solo over no background at all, you'll be able to hear how punchy even the treble notes sound. It's a quicker decay, but that can be useful in a lot of styles.I've had these strung on an old Yamaha dreadnaught for a while and they do maintain their tone as advertised. Anybody who has picked up that guitar has immediately remarked at how clear the strings sounded (plus they're eye-catching too-- a dark contrast over a natural finish body almost invisible over a dark fretboard). They're easy on the fingers as well, if you're an infrequent player or just starting out. Your fret hand will thank you.Overall I'm giving these 5 stars -- they're a high quality string, they look great and, most important, when you know what type of sound you need, they sound great.

Stringing acoustic guitars tends to beat on the strings a bit more than these were designed for. While the coating looks amazing, the kink before cutting will cause the coating to divorce the strings. And bending while stringing seems to cause coating to rebel. They feel okay. They still look pretty good. I coiled them at the machines to avoid the trimming round core issue. That made me want to trim the trashed coating ends off. Too hard to link at this point. Black paint market helps that. Just can do that on the part that the bridge removes from the peg pops that happened. Still like them a lot. Hopefully the coating adhesion is just about me getting overzealous and excited about trying them. I have dragon skins and Red Devils, and some white neons to try as well. These play and sound good and may just have suffered my anxiousness.

DR is great! Longtime user for both guitar and bass. Very bright sound, even with the coating. Looks so much cooler than bronze strings-added plus.

The strings sound fine but the coating is terrible. I got three sets of these and they all are doing the same thing.

These are the longest lasting strings I have ever had. It's really like they took a regular string and hit it with primer and then a high gloss paint. They don't sound amazing. They aren't bad by any means but it's almost as if they are a little muted because there is a bunch of crud on the strings. They do take some of the bite off the high E, which I appreciate. These will never be my go to string for sound quality or if playing in a performance setting.... But they are PERFECT for my beater acoustic that goes from sitting on the stand for weeks to getting drug out into the woods/elements and getting played hard for 3 days.

It's personal preference, I like it but you have to try it yourself.

Look cool, sound nice, but the picture shows how much coating came off the high E and B strings after maybe 3 hours of playing fingerstyle. Boo

I've been playing guitar for 40+ years. I've used all sorts of strings and often buy a selection of strings from companies I haven't used before -I just like knowing what is available and how they sound and hold up. Thes DR strings (along with their other colors) are among the best I've used. They sound great. Although they have some sort of corrosion inhibitor coating, they don't feel coated, and the last about 3-4 time longer than most strings.