They have this twanging, rough sound which I do not like, so I trashed them and went back to D'Addario. These are good for heavy metal, but I play a mix of songs that do not always have distortion - without the distortion they still sound rough. I gave them 4 stars, because the E (1st) sting broke on me while putting them on, while the individual string packing is nice - helps to keep them in order when changing them.