It’s been written many times that one of the reasons Billy Gibbons uses super light strings is that B.B. King once asked him why he was working so hard playing thicker strings. Thus, the Reverend embarked on a long term path of using very light strings.

Back when I was young, .008s were common and .009s were considered “heavy”. Then things changed and the world started moving to heavier strings, with the belief that heavier strings made for better tone. Many have done light vs heavy tests and found minimal if any real difference. Have a look at Rick Beato’s excellent video on this topic and make up your own mind.

I was one of those who bought into the heavier string song. I went so far as to put .013s on my SRV Strat tuned to E flat. A guitar tuned to E flat is a different tone experience, but I confess that I did not enjoy the heavy strings and dropped back to .011s and kept the tuning. My default string gauge is still a set of 0.010s with different low string gauges for different guitars and my own custom set from Curt Mangan that deliver balanced tension.

Still I thought it would be fun to try a set of the “Safest and Cheapest” guitar strings as advertised by the Reverend himself.

The Strings

For my test, I went with a set of Rev. Willy’s Mexican Lottery strings in .009 to .042. The strings are advertised as being custom designed by Billy Gibbons to give that Gibbons tone and are made by Dunlop in California.. You can buy sets as .008s and even .007s but for my first try, I thought that I would stick with the nines. I do have a custom set of Curt Mangan’s that start at .085 and while the eminent Kevin who does my serious guitar work is not a fan, I like them a lot on longer scale guitars, specifically Strats, or other 25.5” scale length instruments. The Rev Willy’s are .009, .011, .016, .024, .032 and .042

The Guitar Used

Many years ago I fell in love with a guitar that I call The Plank. This is a horrible denigration of one of the easiest playing guitars that I own and that says a lot. It is an Ernie Ball Music Man Axis Super Sport. It has an all rosewood neck, a rosewood fingerboard and a 1/4” thick rosewood cap on a basswood body. I love the feel of a rosewood neck over any other wood and have gone out of my way to buy guitars with rosewood necks. I am fortunate to have purchased over the years guitars from Music Man, Fender and Paul Reed Smith that have rosewood necks. In my opinion, there is no better wood for a neck. It feels spectacular. The Axis Super Sport neck is finished in a special oil, and you can retreat the neck if you wish but ordering the oil can be a challenge. It’s a lot like gunstock oil, but definitely NOT linseed oil. I find a regular rubdown with Taylor guitar polish cleans it up and restores the feel easily enough. My version of the Axis Super Sport is a hardtail, not the more common vibrato version and while in my opinion, the Axis Super Sports with vibrato are superb, I am quite happy with the hardtail. It still has locking tuners which are a boon, and sometimes a real pain in the butt. It comes with very hot Dimarzio pickups, a single volume pot, a single tone pot and a 5 way switch. Positions 2 and 4 offer a split humbucker tone that is really nice. The body shape may look familiar as it is the original EVH shape.

Stringing It Up

The Axis Super Sport feeds the strings from the rear like a Telecaster up through the bridge plate and onto a saddle per string. They go to locking tuners over a compensated nut. The tuners will sometimes (as in this case) give me a hard time feeling like the locks have engaged when in fact they have not, resulting in issues of string slippage, so you have to be cautious that the locks are actually locking the string properly. Once locked properly, they function as you would expect. The tuners are made by Schaller for those who care.

These are standard strings with no coating and no assertions about staying in tune. Getting them to hold tune took longer than with my usual D’Addario NYXL choice or the Curt Mangan Monel strings that I favour on my old Les Pauls. Once well and properly stretched, they hold pretty darn well.

First Play Test

The strings are light under your fingers and you have to temper your bends because they bend so easily. Double stop vibratos are a piece of cake and sound delicious. My first play test was very early in the morning, into a desktop rig of Strymon pedals ending in a Strymon Iridium set to it’s Fender Deluxe Reverb amp choice and a Fender Deluxe 1x12 IR. I had to roll off the volume to clean things up as the pickups are quite hot. Despite the thin lower strings, bass response was excellent and the high strings sounded as expected. Bluntly it sounded like a guitar through a Deluxe Reverb. I left the Iridium’s Room setting at noon. Then I punched in the Strymon Compadre Compressor and Boost and with the pickup selector in positions 4 and 5, got a very nice warm jazzy tone. Kicking in a Strymon Sunset set to Texas Blues, I then went all ZZ Top on things and it sounded brilliant. Add some spring reverb from a Big Sky and some Echorec style delay from a Volante and I was off to the races.

The strings held up well through the playing session and did not require retuning despite some aggressive bending and some overbending while I settled into the lighter gauge strings. They stayed smooth and slippery and when I wiped them down after playing exhibited no serious buildup or decay. Being uncoated, I do not expect them to last as long as a good coated string. That said, they list at about 1/2 the cost of a good coated string and you may prefer the sound of uncoated strings. The only way to know is try them yourself.

Conclusions

None so far. They are good sounding, easy to play basic strings. Build quality has been good so far and my next test will be the set of .008s that I bought when I bought the .009s, possibly on my FSR Rosewood necked Telecaster, which still has the factory Fender strings on it, and I really really dislike those.

Thanks for reading and until next time, peace.