What a Color Coating Does — and What It Doesn't

The most common question we get is whether a colored string is a different string. On an Aurora set it is not: the color is a finish applied to the outer winding of a set that is otherwise built to the same gauge and construction we would wind without it.

Where the color is. On a wound string, the finish sits on the outer wrap. The core wire and the wrap underneath it are unchanged. On a plain string there is no wrap, so the finish is on the string itself.

What the color does not decide. Gauge, string count, and winding are separate specifications. In the configurator you choose them one at a time for exactly that reason — picking Purple does not narrow which gauges you can have, and picking a heavier gauge does not narrow which colors you can have.

What changes with wear. Any finish on a string is a wear surface. How long it looks new depends on how hard you play, how much you sweat, and whether you wipe the set down. That is true of every coated string on the market, ours included.

We are not going to tell you a color coating makes you sound better. It makes the set visible from the back of the room, and it lets you tell strings apart at a glance — which, on a seven- or eight-string instrument in bad stage light, is worth more than it sounds.