Best strings for magnetic pickup mandolin?

[maxr]

What strings do you find give the strongest magnetic pickup reponse from a solid mandolin with magnetic pickups? I'm happy to buy and cut electric guitar strings if they work better. This is for a typical inexpensive Chinese made two pickup design with fairly weak stock pickups.

[Monte Barnett]

Mine came with generic steel strings, but I swapped them out for D'Addario Chrome Flatwounds and never looked back.

[DaveGinNJ]

You may want to check out emando.com

[Martin Beer]

I haven't actually tried them with a magnetic pickup, but the Galli flatwound set is reasonably priced at Hobgoblin and is sold as an electric mandolin set. I like the set I have on my old Harmony, they mellowed out the lower strings nicely. Or Newtone offer all their sets in nickel plated steel, which should be good with a magnetic pickup.

[maxr]

I haven't actually tried them with a magnetic pickup, but the Galli flatwound set is reasonably priced at Hobgoblin and is sold as an electric mandolin set. I like the set I have on my old Harmony, they mellowed out the lower strings nicely. Or Newtone offer all their sets in nickel plated steel, which should be good with a magnetic pickup.

Some of the strings recommended for magnetic pickup mandos have regular-ish E and A string gauges but light gauge Ds and Gs compared to acoiustic sets - the Galli set appears to follow that. I wonder whether that's because the wound Ds and Gs tend to overpower the plain A and E if you follow acoustic string gauges, or just because, with a solid electric mando, you can?

[pops1]

Some of the strings recommended for magnetic pickup mandos have regular-ish E and A string gauges but light gauge Ds and Gs compared to acoiustic sets - the Galli set appears to follow that. I wonder whether that's because the wound Ds and Gs tend to overpower the plain A and E if you follow acoustic string gauges, or just because, with a solid electric mando, you can?

Pickup height can be adjusted, sometimes also pole piece height too, to balance the sound somewhat. A larger string will be louder given the same adjustments. I would say all sets will have a plain E string, which should be the same volume for the same gauge, no matter the brand. If you want louder get a heavier set of strings.

[Martin Beer]

Flatwound strings often have slightly higher tension than a roundwound of the same gauge (with some exceptions like Thomastik). So the lighter gauges on the G and D of the Galli set might just be to keep the tension appropriate across the set. It's possible that they may have chosen the gauges for string to string balance with a magnetic pickup, though they don't seem unbalanced when used on an acoustic mandolin, IMO.

[mandroid]

there is a steel core even in bronze wound strings, but better if the winding is seen in the magnetic field, also.