These Strings are HUGE - La Bella Jazz Tapes Review

Are LaBella Jazz Tapes the right strings for you? Believe me, you’ve never played strings like this before.

In this video, I will tell you all you have to know about those strings and what I love about them. And we will mount them on my Archtop to hear how they sound.

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00:00 - Intro
00:14 - Not for every Guitar(ist)
01:12 - Unboxing
01:45 - Why I Love these Strings
02:58 - Hear how they sound
03:40 - Differences with Steel Strings

LaBella Jazz Tapes are strings especially designed for archtops. They are famous for being used by John Pizzarelli. If you want to get his tone, these are the strings to buy.

But there are a few things that you should know prior to buying these strings as they are very special.

It’s likely you’ve never tried anything similar before and there are chances you won’t like them in the first place since they have nothing in common with the traditional electric guitar strings.

First, these strings are made to fit archtops and hollow-body guitars and not suitable for solid-body rock guitars.

They come in two versions: for 6-string and 7-string guitars. The only difference is the extra string for the 7-string set.

The 6-string version exists in light or medium tension. I’ve never tried the light tension but from what I read, it’s too light to play the notes accurately and the medium is the one to go.

There are two things you should know about those strings:
First, it’s probably the heaviest set of strings you’ll find on the market for jazz. Each of the string is huge. This means you’ll get a very high tension, which is good for jazz as you don’t need to bend the notes very much.
The second thing is they are wound with nylon tape. This produces a flat and smooth string producing a war jazzy sound with zero finger noise. Only the B and high E strings are tin plated.

What I love about them, above their sound, is that they last a very long time, you can easily keep them 6 months or more.

And the very good thing also is that they never break, due to their thickness. This is a relief especially if you have lots of gigs: you don’t have to worry about having to change a string in the middle of a performance and this alone is a real benefit.

Unfortunately their thickness does not fit every guitar. I know that some people couldn’t string their guitar with those strings because they would be too big for the string slots of the nut or for the tuning machines. This might require some setup if you really want to use them.

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