Alice A506 guitar strings review (China)
I was nicely surprised by these.
The Alice A506 guitar strings are available on Amazon. Why did I buy them? Price. Buying guitar strings gets expensive, and I was able to score 5 packs of these at $10 shipped.
Now before even getting into whether this string is good or not, notice that there's a circle on the left side of the package. This is a a scratch-off portion (kind of a like a scratch-off lotto ticket) where you can verify the authenticity of the guitar string. When you scratch off the bottom portion, you're presented with a number:
After that, you to go china-alice.com, punch in the number, and if the number is good, it will validate:
This is the first time I have ever seen anything like this for a guitar string product.
Was any personal information required to validate the product? No. The system did not ask for my name or email address or anything like that; it is simply a system to verify that what you bought is the genuine article.
Why does Guangzhou Romance Musical Instrument do this? It's because counterfeiting in the musical instrument world happens a lot in China, and this company cares enough to the point provide you, the customer, with a way to absolutely verify that what you bought is genuine...
...and I can understand why, because in all honesty, the A506 is a pretty darned good guitar string.
The review (and video demo)
There have been more than a few times I've bought strings only to open the package and find a few that are rusted right out of the package. That wasn't the case here. Every string in the pack was in pristine condition and very shiny with not a single hint of rust anywhere.
The strings installed easily, and, surprisingly, were stretched properly in a short period of time.
The feel of the strings surprised me. It's good. I'm pretty sure these are round-core construction, which is ordinarily something you pay more for. Thankfully, these do not feel like Ernie Ball Slinky strings (I can't stand the feel of those,) have a smooth touch and didn't hurt my fingers at all.
The tone is bright, but not over-bright. For Strat and Tele guitars, oh yes, these are good.
My only complaint about the strings is that there is a bit of pronounced fret drag noise when moving fret-to-fret. Other than that, yeah I actually like these.
How long will they last? I don't know that yet. I change out strings every 3 to 4 weeks, so if they last that long without any weird stuff going on or snapping, I'll be happy with that.
On a final note before showing the video below, I have to say that the overall impression I get is that this is a premium quality string. While the packaging is a bit amusing in a good way, what matters is whether the string is good or not. And I can say yes, the string is good.
Published 2015 Sep 4
