Dear Mr Hardly,

First may I heartily thank you for "holding the fort" as they say during my recent absence.

Unfortunately with so-called "progress" in string making, many strings are now very hard to weld due to the strange exotic alloys that they contain together with the unfortunate tendancy to "wind" them with even more exotic non-ferrous alloys. The latest "innovation", i.e. that of coating the strings with some sort of what I understand to be clothing material, unfortunately leaves a completely gooey mess which is most unpleasant on the fingers.

Fortunately, there is an easy solution. You can string your guitar with special "welding wire" which already comes coated with copper or another alloy of your preferred choice. These wires can have a tensile strength of 70,000 lbs or more which should be strong enough for even high tunings (take care against overtuning due to the current fad of "scalloped braces" which may fail during the process allowing your trousers to fall down) and come in a convenient range of diameters in bulk coils, which should save a lot on those highly expensive little packets with short lengths of string that seem to be all the rage these days. If you do want to spend that little bit more, you can buy a flux-cored variety which should answer your technical question.

A point of caution: welding is a dangerous process requiring skill. You should not risk your bass player's well-being. It is essential to take the entire assembly to an experienced welder and to use a specialist non-musician such as a drummer to hold the loose ends. Also please be careful when working with a dobro in case you should inadvertently weld the strings to the resonator.

I do hope this helps!

Yours most sincerely,

Dr. Guitar