MI Pro

Looking around British manufacturing (as MI Pro did in August this year) it is all too easy to miss the smaller players of the MI sector, but we were intrigued by a phone call from Strings & Things’ Pete Lunney that pointed out that we had overlooked a pretty big player in the strings and accessories market – namely the Picato operation in the Rhondda Valley in Wales.

There was nothing to do but get along there and see what was going on. It turns out that there has been a string manufacturing business in the Rhondda for decades, initially under the moniker of GMS, a company that was bought from the liquidator by Strings & Things in 1984, merged with Nashville Music Strings (in which the company already had an interest) and then moved to its current industrial premises (from a Victorian gas showroom, no less) a year later.

Since then, Strings & Things has been adding string and accessory brands, building up to the current modest-but-impressive set-up. Considering the work that Strings & Things does in the UK with the mega-brands Ernie Ball, Music Man, Dunlop and Hercules, it is fascinating to see the obvious affection that Lunney holds for the small, anonymous Welsh factory.

“We don’t make a big song and dance of it publicly, but in terms of string making, you’ll find us everywhere – you’d be surprised.” As, indeed, I was.

Lunney, having joined the UK supplier at around the time the company was moving Picato to its present location, found himself moving to Wales to manage the manufacturing business in 1987 – a position he held for the next 11 years. In that time he oversaw the development of a bewildering amount of string products, bought up names such as Concertiste nylon strings and Klondyke straps and established accessory brands that have become the staple of many a retailer.

Arguably the most impressive of Picato’s developments over the years, however, is the rather niche area of double bass strings and the Innovation brand. Quietly, with the absence of any fuss, this string brand has grown to be something of a cult obsession among jazz and rockabilly players, particularly in the States, but with significant (and still growing) sales throughout the rest of the world, too.

It started in 1994, when Lionel Davis, a jazz bassist with a background in R&D engineering, came to Picato with the idea of creating a bass string with the reliability of steel core strings, but the preferred tonal qualities of gut.

Together with Tony Roberts, Picato’s master string maker and Lunney’s successor as the factory manager, and later (as Davis became increasingly reclusive), Michael Moore, a jazz bassist of unimpeachable pedigree, the team came up with a non-metallic core and a winding process that fitted the bill.

Aimed at the jazz player, the strings immediately began to impress players on both sides of the Atlantic and with added input from the then assistant principle of the National Orchestra of Wales, Norman Mason, adaptations were established making sets that worked just as well for bowed (or arco) playing.

Two sets were developed initially, the 140H for the predominantly pizzicato jazz players, with a brighter, edgier sound, and the 140B for orchestral bassists, predominantly playing arco.

Which might very well have been the end of the story, but as is so often the case with valuable innovations (pun unavoidable), the most unexpected markets are attracted.

“I’d never really paid much attention to rockabilly music, let alone considered what the market was like,” explains Lunney, “but once these players got hold of Innovation strings, they just loved them. It opened up a whole new area for sales and that led to the strings coming to the attention of the psychobilly players. I have to admit, I don’t think I’d even heard of it before, but when I started to check it out online and search through some of the forums, I saw that psychobilly is simply huge.”

The result of the rockabilly injection was a series of strings (five basic sets, no less) aimed squarely at the market and including silver windings to further brighten the sound, making the strings ideal for the ‘slapping’ technique adopted by many of the players.

As MI Pro goes to press, Strings & Things will be launching a new set, designed to directly target the psychobilly ‘slap’ market. With the rockabilly strings having turned full circle and attracted a lot of jazz players, who knows where the psychobilly strings might lead. While most definitely a success story in every sense of the phrase, Innovation strings is but one corner of the Picato factory, overseen by Roberts (and ably assisted by Gaynor Stone and Jayne Rosser) with Lunney (now general manager of the entire Strings & Things operation) occasionally making the trip up from Shoreham to keep in touch with goings on.

“Innovation is a really important brand, of course,” explains Lunney, “but I suppose the big thing for us is classical guitar strings and the OEM work we do. It’s not something we can talk about, but if I could, you’d find that we supply strings to lots of ‘name’ brands, as well as for retailers that want their own brand name on the packets.”

“We are quite unique in that we can do what the big manufacturers can’t,” adds Stone. “We have real expertise in making strings for bowed instruments and classical guitars. Our competitors will often pass customers on to us with orders that they simply can’t handle. If we have the measurements and the details, we can usually do it.” The company’s own Concertiste range of nylon guitar, violin and cello strings adds further to this steady turnover.

Beside the string business, the ‘Things’ aspect of the company is also covered at the Picato factory, with a small team working on cutting, sewing and printing the leather for the Klondyke range of straps and there is a healthy trade for the Big Boy woven straps, as well. Lunney takes it upon himself to consider and research this area of business to find the best way to keep the design elements of this most fashion-led of markets up-to-date. “There’s always something new to consider, although in such a competitive market, it’s very difficult to come up with something original,” he says.
“You’ll have an idea and then see that someone else is already doing it. I think we do all right, though.”

Strings & Things is a company that has gone from strength to strength over its 30-plus year history and all of it without a great song and dance about what it is up to, preferring, as with any good supplier, to let its products do the talking. One could use the term ‘old school’ if that phrase hadn’t become so unfairly interpreted as a negative thing in recent years.

The Piacato operation, very much a British manufacturing case study, in many ways epitomises the attitude of the greater company.

“This is a family business,” says Lunney of the Rhondda factory. “Although there is no family name attached to it, the fact that we have developed this business with pretty much the same people for over 20 years means that we have a team here that works for each other in the way any family business would.” And Lunney’s affection for the business has obviously grown from this.

With much of its work in the realm of OEM and the remainder distributed into the world through the Strings & Things sales and marketing machine, there is no real need for the company to make a great fuss about the industrial unit in Treorchy – although the value of the story to UK manufacturing in MI stands up to the greatest scrutiny. With certain supplies coming from France and Argentina, the bulk of materials are also from the UK.

“I try to keep it in the UK wherever possible,” says Lunney. Rather like keeping it in the family.

Strings & Things: 01273 440442