Eventually I found out I had a nickel allergy, and suprise-suprise guitar strings are mainly made out of nickel.
I had tried other guitar strings such as the nanoweb coated guitar strings by Elixir and even 24 carat gold plated guitar strings, but guess what? As soon as the coating wears off, you will get the rash again!
Luckily I did cure this by switching to stainless steel guitar strings. I didn't know it at first, but once I switched to using stainless steel electric guitar strings my rash just vanished!
I found I prefer Fender's Stainless Steel Bullets, but they are plenty of stainless steel strings available for both electric and acoustic guitars.
Ironically, even stainless steel still contains nickel! But fortunately the way the metal is constructed at molecular level, it is that tightly bound that the nickel properties do not escape... It is just as well really!!
4 comments:
I've got this, Elixiers dont really cure it 100%, just changing to stainles
Thanks
I've had this horrible condition for over 10 years. I was mis-diagnosed with Eczema over and over. I finally found a dermatologist who patch tested me, and I found that I'm highly allergic to Nickel and Cobalt.
I have to get my electric guitars re-fretted with Jescar brand EVO Gold/Alloy fret wire, and use Optima gold-plated strings(neither contain Nickel). I tried stainless steel strings to no avail, but I'm suspecting the nickel in the fretwire(as it wears and sheds on the strings) is the main cause.
Any other advice would be appreciated, It mainly affects my left index(the worst) and middle fingers.
Have you tried acoustic guitar strings?
They are wound with phosphor-pronze not nickel.
And they do work in electric guitar too.
Don't know what they use to coat the 2 smallest unwound strings though.
Sounds better than steel strings...
Evo fret wire looks good and is nickel free.
The best nickel free guitar strings I have found are the strings made for acoustic guitars. They are usually wound with bronze, not nickel.
(stainless steel strings sound horrible when compared with nickel or bronze..)
I use these:
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/alice-acoustic-guitar-strings-6-piece-set-35734
they are a little thicker than what I was used to before. But you can always discard the 6th string, and get the 1st string from different set...
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