- Lovely & long established family company!
- Solid strings, with very stiff feeling for lower tunings
- Sounds OK for the price
- Pretty stiff for standard tunings IMHO
- Doesn't retain the initial spark for a long time
- Too aggressive price increase
Hello there! Back again with another brief product review for you! This time, we will be looking at La Bella HRS-73 7-string electric guitar strings. I have recently purchased a couple of 7-string sets for my Schecter Hellraiser Hybrid PT-7 and have been trying out different brands/models.
Table of Contents
My guitar came with a set of Ernie Ball strings. Unfortunately, I broke the high E string in the 2nd week and couldn’t really record anything with it. I also had D’addario NYXL09564SB strings as a backup and have been using them since then. I must say I really liked them despite them being too expensive to stock up! 🙂 I played my guitar often with this set and would almost record a short sample. But the D string broke at the tuning post! So next time, I will also publish something regarding this set of strings. For this reason, I had to restring my guitar again. This time, I have picked up La Bella HRS-73 strings and wanted to publish a quick La Bella HRS-73 review for you!
About La Bella
For those who don’t know about La Bella company, they are an old-established family company based in New York, USA. When I used to work in the musical instruments industry, I had the chance to meet them at Frankfurt Musik Messe. Really lovely people and excellent company! La Bella is the oldest and continuously family-owned and operated string manufacturer in the world! Their tradition of string manufacturing dates back to the 1640s in Salie, Italy. In 1913, brothers Olinto & Emilio Mari moved to New York and also brought their family business with them! During my visit to Musik Messe, I even had some sample strings from La Bella and tried them in some of my videos. Even though I’m a die-hard Elixir fan, I really loved their Vapour Shield coated strings. 
Check out my Elixir Strings review here
As you may probably know, picking up a set of 7 strings is not an easy task in most cases. There are some extra parameters that you should be aware of. With 7-string guitars, you usually have a longer scale length that helps with the low strings’ tension. However, this longer scale may also require you to choose thicker gauges if you ever want to use flat or drop tunings. As I have mentioned, D’addario NYXL09564SB wasn’t really made for going flat or drop tunings. I think it’s perfect for standard tuning on a 26.5-inch scale length. When you talk about guitar strings, there’s only one way to find the best set of strings for your own use! It’s simply to try as many sets as possible, and even try custom-made sets as well. 
The reason I bought La Bella HRS-73 strings was to have a thicker low E string, as I noticed a 46-gauge low E didn’t really sound excellent as an open string. Most 7-string sets feature a 46-gauge as low E, and it’s really difficult to find in-between gauges from well-known brands. So, in order to try and experiment with it myself, I restrung my guitar with La Bella HRS-73 very recently.
La Bella HRS-73 features a 10 to 64 gauge and consists of 10-13-17-30-42-52-64 gauges. In comparison to D’addario NYXL09564SB, which features 9.5-13-16- 24-34-46-64 gauges, I thought it would sound tighter on the low end. To be honest, I didn’t really check any product descriptions except gauges. But La Bella clearly states that this set of strings features thicker cores for standard and drop tuning. 
However, I think “for standard tuning” refers to 7-string guitars with a 25.5-inch scale. You can also validate this insight from user reviews at Thomann. In my case, I immediately got turned off by how heavy and tense it felt! Then I checked the product description and found the statement. However, even with a flat tuning, it still felt really stiff! This clearly shows that there’s a huge potential for drop tunings! So, for my readers here’s a friendly warning for you! 
Buy La Bella HRS-73 10-64 strings, if you are planning to use them on a 25.5 inches scale at standard tuning or on a 26.5 inches scale at whole step down tuning.
As it’s a process of trying and finding the most usable strings, I have tuned my guitar a whole step down, meaning from the 7th string to the 1st string: A-D-G-C-F-A-D. I must confess, this was the first time in my 20 years of playing with a 7-string, whole step-down tuning! 🙂 I have noticed that plain strings are already changing colour as La Bella doesn’t really claim a coating or protection layer on the strings. So I guess that I will not be stocking these strings more often. But when you consider the price tag and if you are after the whole step-down tunings, I think it’s just the perfect set! I would definitely stock them up if I played at this tuning every time. 
To give you a rough idea of how La Bella HRS-73 sounds at a whole step-down tuning, I have recorded a short video featuring my playing random stuff. In this video, I have used my Schecter Hellraiser Hybrid PT-7 along with Ernie Ball instrument cable (EB6081), directly going into my RME Babyface PRO and then into Reaper. As my VST amp, I have used the LePou Poulin LeXtac amp model with the Ignite Amps NadIR impulse loader. At the beginning of the signal chain, I also placed the Mokafix Cream Tube as a booster and added TC Electronic M30 hall reverb.
Sound Demo (no talking)
I have also just released a new article in which I test the Pyramid 7 string and D’Addaro NYXL 1164 review featuring my Schecter Hellraiser PT-7, along with ENGL E570 and ENGL Cabloader. Don’t forget to check this out, too!
Pricing & Availability
As usual, my go-to music webstore would be Thomann. I often place orders on Thomann and also add additional strings to test and feature them for you. I bought HRS-73 strings in 2021 and have not bought them again. When I got these strings, they’d retail around €7.90; now they will cost €11.90. This is around 50% increase in 5 years, just so you know!
Check out La Bella HRS-73 on Thomann here
However, feel free to check out Reverb.com as well, as you may find great offers in the used market.
Check out La Bella HRS strings on Reverb here
Last but not least, also feel free to check out Amazon stores, as I have spotted many La Bella strings listed there as well.
Check out La Bella strings on Amazon here
I hope you have enjoyed this brief La Bella strings article. Thanks for visiting my blog and supporting me so far! I will hopefully see you in the next review here!
