Today in guitar: Billy Strings' grief-stricken new album, Polyphia's dance djent, and Jamerson's flatwounds return

The day's biggest story is an acoustic one. Billy Strings, the most electrifying flatpicker of his generation, announced So Much For Goodbyes this morning, his fifth album of original songs, due August 28 on Reprise Records (Live For Live Music). He co-produced it with T Bone Burnett, and it is a grief record, shaped by the death of his mother, whose unfinished painting became the cover. The lead single "Burn the Other End" features backing vocals from Jack White and Burnett, and the album marks his first full run of shows since he broke his leg skateboarding in April. He plays Austin City Limits on July 2 and Willie Nelson's Fourth of July Picnic two days later.

For a strings desk, a Billy Strings album is the best possible excuse to answer the question his playing always provokes: what is he actually playing? The answer is documented on D'Addario's own artist page, in his own words. His set is D'Addario XS Phosphor Bronze, medium gauge, .013 to .056, coated (D'Addario). "Gotta have that medium gauge, gotta have that coated, because we sweat like crazy," he says. That one sentence is a whole lesson in why bluegrass strings are heavy and treated, and we pulled the full breakdown, the gauge, the coating, the guitars, and the honest limit on all of it, into a breakout this morning: what strings Billy Strings uses, and the flatpicker's case for medium phosphor bronze.

The honest part, the part a beginner needs to hear, is that the string is the buyable starting line, not the sound. His tone is the flatpicking, built over a lifetime. Buy the set because it is a genuinely good bluegrass string, and if you want to size it to your own guitar first, our guide to acoustic string gauges by body shape is the place to start.

Guitar World published its June Editors' Picks this afternoon, and the loudest entry belongs to Polyphia (Guitar World). The instrumental duo's new single "Can You Feel It" has the outlet coining a genre, "dance djent," and reading it as a sign that Polyphia's coming fifth album may be their heaviest yet, with talk of ultra-heavy riffs and eight-string prototypes (Guitar World). Tim Henson and Scott LePage keep finding new ways to elevate what a guitar can do, and the gear conversation is about to follow them into heavier territory.

For most players, though, chasing Henson starts with a lighter, brighter string than the riffs suggest. His Ernie Ball signature set is a hybrid .0095 to .046 that pairs a Cobalt wrap with a Paradigm high-strength core, built for clean, precise fingerstyle rather than for drop tuning. We keep the sourced picture on our Tim Henson profile, and the honest caveat there is the same as always: the set is a real, well-made string chosen for his hands, not a shortcut to his technique.

If the eight-string talk is what caught your ear instead, that is a genuinely different string problem, one of tension and scale length rather than brand. Our eight-string gauge guide runs the math on keeping a low F sharp tight and articulate, which is the real engineering behind every djent record.

Two of the month's most beautiful picks lean on nylon, though only one of them leaves steel behind entirely. Guitar World's June list features Hermanos Gutierrez, the Swiss-Ecuadorian sibling duo, whose single "Canto Andino" is, in the editors' words, strung throughout with nylon acoustics, and Rodrigo y Gabriela, whose cinematic "Monster" pits Sanchez's Strats against Quintero's custom Yamaha nylon-string, based on the brand's NTX series (Guitar World). Both reach for nylon for the same reason: warmth.

That is the thread this desk cannot leave alone, and it echoes acoustic master Peppino D'Agostino's nylon switch that we covered a few days ago. Steel strings ring with bright, cutting overtones. Nylon rolls that top end off for a rounder, gentler, more vocal voice, which is exactly what a mountain lament or a delicate duet wants. Same hands, different string material, a completely different instrument. If the sound has you curious, our guide to nylon and classical guitar strings lays out what nylon does to your tone and which set fits which player, our warm versus bright strings breakout maps the full material spectrum from steel to nylon, and when you make the jump, how to change classical guitar strings walks the tie-block knots that trip up every steel-string player the first time.

The bass desk's headline is a resurrection. Guitar World's June bass roundup leads with Fender's recreation of James Jamerson's 1962 Precision Bass, the "Funk Machine" (Guitar World). Jamerson played bass on 23 Billboard number-one pop hits, and the Funk Brothers, the Motown house band he anchored, cut more number ones than the Beatles, the Beach Boys, the Rolling Stones, and Elvis combined (Wikipedia). The reissue is faithful down to the nitrocellulose sunburst and the single pickup, and, crucially for us, each bass ships with La Bella flatwound strings, in keeping with Jamerson's own preference (Guitar World).

That detail is the whole Motown low end in miniature. Jamerson's dark, thumpy, singing bass tone is as much a string choice as a finger choice, and the string is a flatwound: smooth ribbon wrap, almost no finger noise, a mellow voice that sits under a vocal instead of fighting it. You do not need a reissue P-Bass to get there. A set of La Bella Deep Talkin' Flats on any Precision gets you most of the way, which is exactly the set behind our James Jamerson profile and our Jamerson flatwound guide.

If you are weighing that dark flatwound voice against the brighter, more aggressive roundwound sound, our flatwound versus roundwound guide settles which family fits your music before you commit.

The same roundup delivered a genuine surprise from the other end of the bass world. After decades defining progressive metal on a six-string, Dream Theater's John Myung has returned to four strings for a new Ernie Ball Music Man John Myung Bongo 4 (Guitar World). His reason is refreshingly physical: "While the six-string is my comfort zone, I missed the physical freedom and generous string spacing of the Music Man four-string bass," he said, adding that returning to four strings for the Images and Words material on Dream Theater's 40th Anniversary Tour "completely restored the musical conviction of those songs live."

That is a string-spacing story, and it is worth a beginner's attention. Every string you add crowds the neck, so a four-string gives you the widest spacing and the most room for slap, fingerstyle, and speed; a five or six trades that room for range. Myung's move is the same calculus a lot of players run in reverse. If you are weighing whether you actually need a low B, our bass string gauges guide walks the four versus five decision and the gauge shift it brings, and the five-string Regular Slinky set shows what the added low string actually costs in tension and feel. The fuller picture stays on our John Myung profile.

A few lighter notes threading through the June roundups. Fender's 75th Anniversary collection added a Squier Paranormal Precision Bass Thinline SJ, a semi-hollow reimagining of the P-Bass with a P and Jazz pickup pairing, proof that the classic outline still has new tricks (Guitar World). La Bella also rolled its Ian Martin Allison signature set into a short-scale option, same custom .045 to .103 gauges on a hex core with a polished stainless wrap, a reminder that short-scale players finally have real signature choices. And over in the guitar world, Bob Dylan lost another player as Bob Britt quit his touring band after more than five years, the latest churn in a lineup that quietly added jazz great Julian Lage in mid-June (Guitar World). We covered Lage's flatwound Telecaster tone in our June 27 briefing. The rosters change. The strings still make the sound.