Ernie Ball strings to make music reads like the who's who in contemporary music history. The story of the Slinky itself deserves its own place in rock and roll history. In the early 60s rock and roll guitar was exploding. More and more people came in to buy a set of guitar strings from Ernie Ball's music store, throwing away the sixth string, and then buying a banjo first string. This caused every string in the set to be much thinner. Ernie thought there should be a rock & roll string set packaged with these lighter gauges. "... I called (Fender) to explain my idea; and again, he reported back that Leo Fender wouldn't discuss it. Then I contacted the people at the Gibson guitar company and tried to talk them into making Rock & Roll strings, but they thought it was a lousy idea. OK; if you guys won't do it, then I really will! And that's how I came up with the first set of Slinky strings." All Ernie Ball strings share the classic simplicity, solid reliability, elegant function, and fair price that are synonymous with the name Ernie Ball.