SETS SAMPLED: Nickel Electric (009-045) RRP £3.65, Bronze Acoustic Light (012-054) RRP £3.95 & Bass Stainless Lights (044-098) RRP £9.95.

Economic reality being what it is, most of us leave our guitar and bass strings in place far longer than we really should. It's all right for the top professionals (who are usually sponsored and thus get their strings for free) to change their sets every night, but for those of us who aren't in that happy position, the yearly cost of new strings can add up to a small fortune - especially if we play regularly, take changing our strings seriously and like to use one of the premium quality makes. A helping hand, however, has recently been outstretched, in the form of the brand new Klondyke range - perhaps a deceptively American-sounding name for what are, as far as we on IT can tell, the first Japanese strings to have been seriously marketed in Great Britain.

Of course, it was inevitable that sooner or later our friends from the Far East (having done so well with their guitars, keyboards and drums) would have a crack at the lucrative U.K. string market which, prior to Klondyke's birth, has been dominated by either British or American made strings - the latter usually costing a rather hefty price premium over home-grown types. Klondyke, however, aren't just a Japanese whim; in fact their importers have a background in American strings and have spent many months, we gather, working with the Japanese to get the sound and quality of these strings right for our market, and at a price which we can afford. Have they succeeded? We sampled three of the four different types Klondyke offer in an attempt to find the answer.

The Klondyke range is small, but covers the vast majority of needs. On the electric guitar side it provides three Nickel wound sets (008-038, 009-045 and 010-046) which each sell for £3.65. Acoustic players have two sets (both with wound thirds) which are dubbed 'Light' (012-054) and 'Extra Light' (010-046) at £3.95 per set, while bassists have two basic choices, either Stainless Steel Roundwound "Lights' (044-098) and 'Mediums' (045-105) at £9.95 per set, or Nickel Roundwounds, in the same gauges, which will sell for £11.75.

Testing strings, of course, isn't a precise science, and we on IN TUNE would never try and pretend that it is. In fact we're probably the only musicians' mag. in the world that even tries - not because we think we're the only ones who can, but because we believe that strings are important enough to warrant serious review attention. On the other hand, the very best that we can hope to do is give you, our readers, a general guide to a string type's qualities. Whatever makers may like us to believe, strings do vary one packet from another, and what constitutes one player's delight will be another's greatest hate. All we can hope to do is sample several sets of the brand in question, and try to come to some sort of general conclusion which you can use as a basis on which to decide whether or not to try them.

Having established that principle, how did we get on with the Klondyke sets we sampled? Read on.

The first sampled set were the Bronze wound acoustic Lights, which went onto a Gibson J25. They went into tune quickly and held their pitch very well, despite some heavy handed playing during a rather drunken evening's sing-along session, in which they were subjected to the attentions of various fingerstyle players. The Klondyke Bronze's basic balance, clarity and brilliance seemed to be really first class, and they held their pitch very commendably, even when subjected to re-tuning a couple of times through open chord tunings. Not wiped down after their initial battering, they continued to sound good the following day and were still acceptably vital a couple of weeks later (when this review was written). While the Klondyke acoustics didn't have the outstanding tone of the very finest (top priced) strings, they seemed to us to offer a very acceptable compromise of quality and price. At only £3.95 a set they seem to us to represent extremely good value for money. They aren't the absolute best acoustic Bronze wound strings that we've ever played in terms of either sound or feel, but they are very good value for money - for either the impoverished player, or the guitarist who changes his or her strings very frequently and is trying to keep the strings bill down.

Encouraged by the sound and lasting qualities of the Bronze acoustic Klondykes, we tried the Nickel wound electrics next, a 009—045 set, which we fitted to a Tokai S***t copy. Again, the Klondykes went on easily and both felt and sounded extremely good for such low priced strings. Fairly hefty use of the Tokai's whammy bar didn't produce any serious pitch problems (in fact the Klondykes settled down very well), and the sound was good and pokey. The strings had a nice feel, too - again, better than we would have expected for the price. In terms of their lasting qualities, we have encountered strings which held their tonal brightness longer, but not at this sort of price. As with the acoustic types, for players who either change their strings every night and want to keep costs down, or for the hard-up, we reckon that these newcomers represent extremely good value for money.

And so onto Klondyke's bass strings. Two types (Nickel and Stainless Steel) are offered, and we tried a set of the RRP £9.95, Stainless types on a Tokai J-Bass. Choosing a medium/average gauge for the sake of a useful test, we tried the Stainless Mediums, which measure a sensible 045, 065, 080 & 105. Once again, no complaints. The Klondykes went on easily and were quickly up to a stable pitch, with a healthy 'twang' and 'slap' when the Tokai was treated to a lengthy playing session. Bass strings are undoubtedly the most difficult types to assess, if only because the criterion that most players seem to use for judging them is to ask how long they last between changes - and at today's prices, who can blame them? Our trial period with these bass strings simply hasn't been long enough to answer that question. All we can say is that our Stainless Klondykes went onto our Tokai bass, sounded really good and resonant, showed no weaknesses on the Low E and A (often a problem with cheap strings) and four weeks later, having played through two 3-hour sets and countless 'pick me ups-put me downs', still sounded very much more than acceptable.

Overall, we developed some very positive feelings about these new Klondyke strings during our tests. In each case, while we'd accept that none of the three types sampled would class as the best strings we've ever used, every IT writer who tried them agreed that they sounded far better than most other lower-priced imported strings, and (especially when the asking price was taken into account) our enthusiasm grew even greater. In terms of their feel, sound and lasting qualities, we reckon that Klondyke strings represent fine value for money and we have no hesitation in recommending them to our readers - especially those who need to change their strings on a gig by gig basis, or those who can't afford the very best but still want the highest quality they can get for their money.

More details on Klondyke strings from the Klondyke Trading Co., (Contact Details).