DR Strings Pure Blues Review PHR-11 – Smoothest Playing Feel!

Hello there, and welcome back to yet another guitar string review article. It’s been a while since I posted an article here! As you may have noticed, I have been publishing new articles on various guitar gear recently and here we are going to continue with an electric guitar string review, featuring DR Strings Pure Blues PHR-11 strings!

Last time, I tested Thomastik Infeld Power Brights RP 111 on my lovely FGN Boundary Odyssey electric guitar in standard D tuning. As I explained in the article, I loved it a lot and played my guitar so much that the Power Brights lost its sizzle in around 2 months.

Check out my Thomastik Infeld Power Brights RP 111 review here

As every time I need to restring my guitars, I feel very excited to test another set and restrung my guitar with DR Strings Pure Blues PHR-11 strings set.

TL;DR

If you are a regular visitor to my blog, you may already know that I’m a big fan of Elixir guitar strings. Unlike people who are completely against coated strings, I find them very successful and really enjoy the luxury of long life span and anti-corrosion qualities. This is important for me, because when you have many guitars, there are sometimes periods that you play one guitar exclusively and never touch the others.

Elixir strings absolutely make sure that the strings on the untouched guitars will not be impacted by the corrosion. I must say I’m very biased on this topic and hardly like a standard set of strings.

However, I’m seriously impressed by the DR Pure Blues strings and start stocking them for future restringing sessions! I have been using them on my FGN electric guitar on standard D tuning and really love the playing feel and the tone.

Although they immediately started reacting to my sweat and changing colours, the initial spark and butter-like playing feel stays the same for a quite while.

On the 11 Gauge strings category, DR Strings Pure Blues PHR-11 strings has managed to settle in number 39! If you consider the competitors that mainly offer very affordable strings and also have a way bigger brand image, I think this is a huge success for the DR Strings brand!

This particular guitar string set has received 4.6/5 out of 85 user reviews!

cigilovic.com totally approves DR Strings Pure Blues PHR-11 strings to anyone who is seeking a set of 11 gauge electric guitar strings! It’s one of the easiest to play guitar strings I have ever tried. Although this may be an advantage for me, I would still recommend checking out other guitar string models or brands for more tight, modern playing feel.

About DR Strings

As we always do, let’s have a quick introduction to this wonderful company, DR Strings here!

DR Strings is a well-respected American company that manufactures many types of strings for a wide variety of stringed instruments. DR Strings was founded in 1989 by Mark Dronge, the son of Alfred Dronge, the founder of Guild Guitars, a highly respected guitar company.

Drawing from his family’s deep musical heritage, Mark Dronge set out to create a company that focused on producing hand-made, high-quality strings. His vision was to bring a level of craftsmanship to string-making that had largely been overshadowed by mass production techniques.

From the beginning, DR Strings differentiated itself by focusing on hand-wound strings, offering a higher degree of precision and quality control compared to machine-made alternatives. The company emphasized using innovative materials and string designs to achieve unique tonal characteristics, which appealed to professional and discerning musicians.

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During the 1990s, DR Strings gained a reputation for their excellent tone and long-lasting durability, which led to endorsements by many professional artists.

Although the company is known for its traditional, hand-wound strings, it also contributed to the string industry with the development of coated guitar strings. DR Strings is also the only company (as far as I know) that manufactures coloured strings that are visually striking and unique!

DR Strings also expanded its product line to include strings for various instruments such as banjos, mandolins, and ukuleles, in addition to their popular guitar and bass strings.

DR Strings Pure Blues PHR-11

DR Strings Pure Blues is an electric guitar string set series that features pure nickel wrap wire and a round core to ensure 100% contact with the wrap wire. This method of manufacturing guitar strings creates a dense and distinctly vintage tone and increased sustain.

One of the most unique guitar players of our era, Derek Trucks is also a big fan of the Pure Blues series and he once said that he has never used anything but DR’s round-core Pure Blues strings for over 20 years.

According to the DR Strings website, the first thing one should notice with the Pure Blues strings is the distinctive warm, balanced sound that produces rich overtones and a pure vintage vibe. Chords ring out, sound sweet and round while single notes become more present and punchy. On top of that, it provides the utmost smooth play feel and touch sensitivity.

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DR Strings Pure Blues series offers many sets aimed at different playing styles requiring different tunings and gauges. Here you can see the entire Pure Blues series strings (taken from DR Strings).

DR Strings Pure Blues Review

As I mentioned, since I have the ambition to try as many guitar sets as possible and document them here on my blog, I added a pack of DR PHR-11 to test with one of my guitars in standard D tuning. I must say I always heard great things about DR Strings but never tried them in my entire life! 🙂

As you can see from the photos, it comes in this lovely blue package. The entire Pure Blues strings produce line uses the same packaging which is easily distinguishable.

PHR-11 features the following gauges for the set 11 – 14 – 18 – 28 – 38 – 50.

Once you open up the package, you will have another sealed package which contains three corrosion-proof envelopes for each pair.

Once you get to the envelopes, you have now these envelopes as shown below. These envelopes contain a pair of strings as indicated on them. This was weird at first as I started wondering why they decided to pair these strings in such a way. Let me know if you know the reason! 🙂

To me, it is a bit weird. I don’t think there’s a strict approach to restringing your guitar in an order like this. Maybe they attempted to help us with identifying the strings without too much of a hassle as DR Strings don’t have coloured ball-ends.

I think this is the most logical explanation as you have opposing strings that are easily distinguishable. For me, it’s not a big problem as I can identify strings without the coloured ball ends or any labelling. However, some people may find it hard to pick the correct strings every time.

I must say I love the coloured ball-ends just like in D’Addario’s as it’s the easiest way to identify strings out of all solutions.

Do You Prevent Dead Strings?

When I checked the packaging, I noticed some text over there and wanted to check what was inside. DR Strings added these notes and visuals for preventing dead strings which I have never seen any other manufacturers do.

It basically explains how the wrapping of wire around the round core and how the company came up with a solution. They added a flattened area that should act as an anchor for the wire to hold onto the core.

So if you ever have to cut/trim the string around the area, you should follow the instructions and bend the string to create this anchor as illustrated in the pictures.

For those who would like to read these, I’m also sharing the instructions here below.

I must say this is really cool and how much DR Strings care about their customers. They did not even hesitate to print this information and photos inside of the package. Really appreciate it!

Before I provide you with my opinion, I’d like to share a quick demo video that I made with DR Strings Pure Blues PHR-11 here.

I used my FGN Boundary Odyssey, Marshall JVM410HJS, Two Notes Torpedo Captor X SE, Voodoo Lab Sparkle Drive, EHX 720 Stereo Looper as well as my RME Babyface PRO FS audio interface and Genelece 8020DPM monitors. I only used Lexicon Concert Hall reverb as my reverb plugin.

DR Strings Pure Blues Sound Demo & Test (no talking)

Verdict

If you are a regular visitor to my blog, you may already know that I’m a big fan of Elixir guitar strings. Unlike people who are completely against coated strings, I find them very successful and really enjoy the luxury of long life span and anti-corrosion qualities.

This is important for me because when you have many guitars, there are sometimes periods that you play one guitar exclusively and never touch the others.

Elixir strings absolutely make sure that the strings on the untouched guitars will not be impacted by the corrosion. I must say I’m very biased on this topic and hardly like a standard set of strings.

However, I’m seriously impressed by the DR Pure Blues strings and start stocking them for future restringing sessions! I have been using them on my FGN electric guitar on standard D tuning and really love the playing feel and the tone. Although they immediately started reacting to my sweat and changing colours, the initial spark and butter-like playing feel stayed the same for a quite while.

The one thing that really impressed me is that after having restrung my FGN guitar, I very often find myself picking up my guitar throughout the day just to feel the resonance of these strings with my rig.

I think PHR-11 would be a great fit even on standard tuning on LP scale guitar as well. It’s one of the easiest-to-play guitar strings I have ever tried. Although this may be an advantage for me, I would still recommend checking out other guitar string models or brands for a more tight, modern playing feel.

Where to Buy DR Strings Pure Blues PHR-11 Strings?

I provided a table of the Pure Blues series above (follow the links to visit Thomann), please check out these links as Thomann stocks them all. At the moment I’m creating a new order from Thomann and already added more PHR-11 as well as PHR-10 versions for my other electric guitars.

Check out DR Strings Pure Blues series here in Thomann

You can also check out Reverb as many sellers there list DR Strings Pure Blues strings as well.

Check out DR Strings Pure Blues series here in Reverb

Lastly, don’t forget to check out Amazon.

Check out DR Strings Pure Blues series here in Amazon

Note that these are affiliate links so, if you buy these strings using the links I have provided, I can make a small commission and keep adding more content on my blog!  Thanks for visiting my blog and supporting me so far! I will hopefully see you in the next review here!

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