Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

[TM1]

Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

Was wondering what happened to them? They came in a 3' long box and the strings were sealed in a cello type envelope. Sure would love to find a couple of boxes of them.. I use to use them because they lasted a long damn time. they were (duh) straight, not coiled.
My hobby is collecting vintage strings, so just like to know what happened to them. I use to use them on my Travis Bean Artist guitar in `76-`79 or so..
Thanks!!

 

[Bob Womack]

Re: Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

I remember them. They were a period piece.

Bob

 

[TM1]

Re: Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

eace2

I remember them. They were a period piece.

Bob

Yeah, sort of an idea before it’s time really..:jim

 

[goldtop0]

Re: Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

Yes we had them down here, I never used them as I think I was into La Bella at the time and stringing up my double neck with those.

 

[musekatcher]

Re: Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

Yes, still have the cool box, hanging in the garage. A bit of nostalgia.

 

[Morningdew]

Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

Was wondering what happened to them? They came in a 3' long box and the strings were sealed in a cello type envelope. Sure would love to find a couple of boxes of them.. I use to use them because they lasted a long damn time. they were (duh) straight, not coiled.
My hobby is collecting vintage strings, so just like to know what happened to them. I use to use them on my Travis Bean Artist guitar in `76-`79 or so..
Thanks!!

I remember them . I used them in the 70’s on my cheap Fame guitar.

 

[Amp360]

Does anyone remember Long John's? They were sold like that as well.

 

[NickiC]

I remember them. And I remember them always being on “discount” into the 80’s.

 

[GC60LP]

Anyone Remember "Nashville Straights" Guitar Strings from the Mid/Late `70's?

Was wondering what happened to them? They came in a 3' long box and the strings were sealed in a cello type envelope. Sure would love to find a couple of boxes of them.. I use to use them because they lasted a long damn time. they were (duh) straight, not coiled.
My hobby is collecting vintage strings, so just like to know what happened to them. I use to use them on my Travis Bean Artist guitar in `76-`79 or so..
Thanks!!

I remember the Nashville Straights very well, TM1. They were very popular for a few years and I actually used them myself. I believe they were made by one of the midwestern companies like Sterlingworth or perhaps National String Company. They were very full sounding and lasted a long time. As you probably recall, they were the very first to use the color coded ball ends (which are back in use once again for private label strings made by D’Addario for Fender and Gibson, etc.). The only thing different between brands is that the color coded balls have a different order of colors for each string. I think that the Nashville Straights lost some favor because the long package would not fit in your guitar case. Thoughts?

 

[ppgf]

used to rawk them on the reg, bitd.

 

[TM1]

I remember the Nashville Straights very well, TM1. They were very popular for a few years and I actually used them myself. I believe they were made by one of the midwestern companies like Sterlingworth or perhaps National String Company. They were very full sounding and lasted a long time. As you probably recall, they were the very first to use the color coded ball ends (which are back in use once again for private label strings made by D’Addario for Fender and Gibson, etc.). The only thing different between brands is that the color coded balls have a different order of colors for each string. I think that the Nashville Straights lost some favor because the long package would not fit in your guitar case. Thoughts?

Yeah, I was playing Travis Bean's @ the time. The other thing was I was living on the Gulf Coast of Texas(Corpus Christi) and it's so humid down there that strings could die overnight. The last thing I wanted to do was clean a set of strings @ 3 am when I got home. I think I went back to Dean Markley's and besides there was only one music store in town that carried them out of the 3 stores. They were like, "Oh man, they're such a hassle to get

 

[My3kGT]

I worked for three musical instrument distributors in the mid-late 70’s so I can offer some information and opinion to the Nashville Straights question as an “industry insider.”

First, you younger guys, and some older ones as well, have to understand what the musical instrument landscape was in the 1970’s. First, the music store was still a mom-and-pop small business. Guitars were important, but many stores seemed to also depend on the local high school band for a lot of their business. As you might expect, we got a lot of small orders from these stores. The common items were guitar strings, harmonicas, clarinet reeds, and drum sticks. Back then Guitar Center was the new kid on the block, with only three or fours stores opened at the time. Second, and very important, trucking was a regulated industry. The government set all the prices and the rules. UPS was the parcel service, (Fed-Ex was just a dream), LTL (Less Than Truckload) box trucks for larger, usually local, loads, and then the big semi’s. UPS was limited to no package over 50 pounds, a maximum load of 100 pounds maximum per customer, no package over 108 inches (9 cubic feet) for the total of length (X2), width (X2), and height (X1). We had a small chain to wrap around the packages to make sure we weren’t over the limits, and our UPS driver kept an eye on things as well. Anything larger than the UPS limits to go by LTL truck, which was pretty expensive.

You can probably see where this is going. Most of our packages were small and light weight. Nashville Straights broke all the rules. We usually had to find some cardboard boxes, scrap if we had any, to cut and make a box to fit the strings the strings for shipment. This was a lot of time spent with a razor knife and the tape dispenser. If there were no scrap boxes around we sometimes had to cut up new guitar box (probably the box cost a couple of dollars by itself) to ship the strings. Because of the way we had to ship the NS strings the customer had to pay for two UPS shipments, when you could easily ship a lot of other stuff in the standard 108 inch box.

Personally, I liked NS strings as I could get them at cost as an employee. Perhaps the best feature of NS, at least for the distributor, was you couldn’t slip a set into your pocket. I would guess the music store owner saw NS as an expensive product compared to other strings, and cost so much in shipping he probably made little or nothing on the sale. Also, NS took a lot of wall, floor or display case space. From what I could see, most music stores wouldn’t stock them for these reasons. The players may have liked them, but the music store owners didn’t. Today, with UPS, Fed-Ex and Amazon, freight is less of an issue, so NS might have made it. I saw them as a good idea but poor execution. The problems outweighed the benefits.