One of guitar playing’s simplest joys comes in ringing out a big, open chord and letting the guitar’s strings and tonewoods work their magic. Now imagine that joy, doubled. The best 12-string guitars ...

The same goes for the guitar’s bridge and saddle. String breakage is another 12-string woe, as is the bridge pulling away from the top due to extra string tension, especially on vintage guitars.

The folks at the Ernie Ball company, which produces 200,000 strings daily, and has sold over 2 billion of them, has come up with a solution, in what it calls the world's first break-resistant string.