I've been an Elixir user ever since I bought my Taylor two and a half years ago. That being said, when I bought an American Standard Strat this summer, I wanted to try other strings. I love coated strings, and was looking for a product with long life, good feel, and good tone. So I wanted to try these new Slinky's. I bought a set and when the stock strings needed replacing, these went on. I strung up, tuned, and played on them, a lot. The initial tone and feel were great. They felt and sounded a lot like uncoated strings, which was great. But as the weeks progressed, and I continued to play, the tone stayed intact, but the feel wore off. My hands sweat a lot and I'm pretty brutal on strings (as in on an uncoated set, they can start corroding after 5 or 6 hours). I would say that after about 3 weeks of playing about 4 hours each week, I began to notice wear on the strings around each fret, and as I wiped them down after each time playing, more dirt wiped onto the rag. During the next few weeks, more and more wear showed up, and they began losing their tuning stability. I finally took them off, and restrung with Elixirs. In a back to back test of new Slinky's vs. brand new Elixirs (Nanoweb on Acoustic) over 8 weeks and playing around 4 hours each week, the slinky's wore a lot faster. At the time of restringing the strat, I still had no troubles with too much wear, or tuning stability on the Elixirs, but the Slinky's needed to go. Personally I'm going to stick with Elixirs, but these were great strings. They feel nice, sound good, and are a little cheaper than Elixirs, but I feel like they could be better. If you want the lasting tone and feel, I would choose Elixirs over these strings.

Bought a three pack of these and love the tone I get on my strat. They feel a little softer than what I was using, and overall are a great purchase.