Official Luthiers Forum!

I've been here for a long time now... and rarely do I recall discussing strings in any depth. Since what we do is highly dependent on decent strings perhaps it's time to share experiences.

Most of my life I was a one trick pony with acoustic strings liking D'Addario EJ-16s and purposely using no others in an effort to eliminate variables in my building and of course the results. I like these string, never have had a single bad string, and the consistency from pack to pack is great too. We also sell these to the tune of a couple thousand sets a year and use them in our repair work too. Again never once have I encountered a bad string with this brand.

Last summer I decided after installing Tomastik strings on a nice high-end Luthier built guitar that I wanted to try them too. So I bought a couple of packs and man are they expensive.... very expensive with street prices being in the $25 a pack range.

The first thing that I noticed was that since I use unslotted pins and slot the bridge, top and plate instead I had to enlarge these slots a bit from the EJ-16s that were on my favorite L-OO that I play the very most. Once on I liked the Tomastik SB-112's a lot and find them to have excellent dynamic headroom, lush overtones, and my favorite thing about these string they feel "softer" and more flexible on the wound strings.

Not that the Tomastic are billed as long lasting they lasted longer with me and I got 6 months out of my first set when I normally get half that out of the EJ-16s.

Will I keep using them, probably not I just can't get past the high cost especially when the DA EJ-16s can be had for less than a quarter of the price of the Tomastiks and I get them for free now..... But if I was a pro player and money was not a problem I would likely prefer the Tomastics.

I tried the various Elixir varieties and although they are great strings too again they are expensive and I find the long lasting capabilities a bit of a detriment in that the unwound strings don't last any longer in my experience but because the wound ones do I tended to be playing with strings that some of them could benefit from replacement.

I'll add that bad strings are a common thing in the repair business and it's often the case that a difficult to diagnose issue may just be a bad string. Replace the string and the problem is gone.

As some of you know our shops is also a place where Bill Nye the science guy would be right at home. We have digital microscopes, cameras, etc and when we find a bad string we often photograph it to show the client.

We did and do find inconsistencies in some of the wound strings with Elixirs from time to time and although in our neck of the woods people seem to love them we decided not to push them or sell them because of the inconsistencies and resulting issues that we would have to back up like it or not.

Anyway these are just some of my experiences with strings so far but what I really wanted to have happen in this thread is for other OLFers to tell us what you like and why. Also tell us about any issues as well, please?

TIA (Thanks in advance not this is Africa...)

Disclaimer: We sell D'Addario strings but are not currently a dealer but I did want to mention that we do have a relationship of sorts with D'Addario products but we are also staunch 1st amendment proponents too...

Nice, my experience has been similar. I use EJ16's on my builds and setups unless customer request or supplies a different string. Haven't used Thomasik strings. I do not prefer the sound, feel or "unraveling" of the elixir's. For a coated sting I really like Cleartone and find them very similar in sound to the Ej16's without the issues I have with elixir. I also like the way the Marin Tony Rice Monel's sound but have found they are not as consistent sounding from guitar to guitar i.e. on the first guitar I heard them on I loved them, put them on my dread and hated them, put them on my 000 and loved them.

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"I've been had again"
Tim Benware
Creedmoor, NC

EJ16's, EJ19's & EJ17's I've tried others and keep coming back. I play quite a bit and I can get two weeks out of a set of EJ17's on my D-18, when they won't stay in tune off they go.
My Strats & Teles like Ernie Ball Slinkys

Pearse nickel acoustic strings. Love those. I use different stringa on different guitars but usually cheap Martin 80-20 nice and brash and not adding much overtone.

I'm far from experienced in terms of build/repair, having only been building as a hobby for a few years.

However, I have 10+ years and several thousand shows under my belt as a player, and although I'm getting too old for the grind that is being a gigging musician, I have in the past put in several years of 300+ shows per year and derived my income from being a performer. When times were slow and I was working less I'd still put in 150ish shows per year.

As such I developed a pretty strong preference for what I liked and didn't like in a string. Most of this is personal so I won't speak much to that - all players have their own preference here. I'll talk mainly about the logistics of strings for me as a working musician.

Longevity was essentially a meaningless characteristic to me, as strings would last me two shows max, regardless of what brand it was or what it was coated with. I found three to six hours under lights sweating hard and playing hard will beat up most any set of strings. This went for both acoustic and electric strings. By 'beat up' I mean losing the sparkle and depth of harmonic content that you get in the first few hours of a new set of strings. One this was gone (after a show or two) they really didn't sound their best and so I wanted them out of my life and a fresh set went on the axe.

Changing strings several times per week was a near universal practice among the fellow full-time musicians I interacted with, at all levels of the industry. The more successful were on tour with a tech who would restring everything before every show, often with free or subsidised strings provided under sponsorship. But even smaller-time guys (including myself) would be out in their car behind the bar or theatre restringing their own instruments before getting on stage each night.

So the more expensive coated strings were out simply because they were just too expensive to replace that frequently. I wanted a consistently good sounding string I could buy in bulk at a cheap price... it's hard enough to make a living playing music so keeping expenses down is a must.

I also never found a coated string that sounded as good as decent conventional uncoated strings. The coated strings (of all brands) always sounded OK but a bit deader when new to my ears, although they maintained this 'OK' sound for longer than a conventional string.

So - sound a bit worse, last a bit longer, cost more. No thanks, I'm getting up in front of people to play and expecting to be paid... sounding as good as possible is just a point of professional pride. If you buy in bulk, you can get the cost of a conventional string set down under $4. I considered it a 'cost of doing business' as a full-time musician.

Over the years I tried most every brand of conventional string that could be had at a reasonable price - D'Addario, Martin, Fender, Ernie Ball, Gibson, Pyramid, Cleartone, Dunlop, Markley, DR, GHS etc etc.

So to bring this rambling post to a close, as a player I found that:

1) Although most of the big brand names were OK, D'addario strings were the best bang-for-buck I found. Very good quality, cheap when bought in bulk (couple bucks per set) and really consistent. For me it became a no-brainer. All my gigging guitars were set up for D'addario in my preferred gauges. XL Nickel for electric, EJ for acoustic.

2) I still used some coated strings, primarily on guitars that sit at home for practice use. They are good in this context as they seem to have a longer life than conventional strings for instruments sitting out on a stand for weeks at a time. You just aren't sweating as much when practicing at home and it's a far less hostile environment. There is just the incidental moisture in the air to deal with and the coated strings last well in this environment. They are good for players who only pick up the guitar for an hour a day recreationally for the same reason...

So, as I spend more time as a builder...

1) If the customer has a strong preference they get the strings they like and the guitar being built is set up for those strings from day one. I will buy several sets of the customer's specified strings for use as consumables when doing the set up.

2) If I get asked what I recommend, my answer is coated (Elixir or EXP) for occasional/casual players, or D'Addario XL/EJ if they express that they change strings regularly. I feel like it is important that I talk to the client about their needs and their behaviours! Some people expect six months or more out of strings and are totally comfortable to live with gradual degradation in string performance. Other people will tweak things endlessly, including frequent string changes. No right or wrong answer, just what is right for the player in question.

3) I'd recommend D'Addario XL/EJ strings to serious pros if they asked, for all the reasons listed above --- But of course serious pros rarely ask because they already know what they like, from hard-won experience I say give 'em what they want... they are out there at the coalface and they know what works for them.

PS - Hesh, I have used the Thomastik strings you mentioned on a instrument for a player who needed the extra flexibility due to lower hand strength. She was happy and I agree they sound very nice and these are now another string I will recommend if it suits what a player is looking for.

Super useful post to me Josh. Clear crisp reasoning, from someone who has put in the hours. Thanks.

Got a set of the spectrum 12's free with a magazine subscription several years ago and they were suberb, certainly suiting my guitar.
But bang for buck it's still D'Addarios.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Some really great replies here, Thanks guys!

Keep em coming!

I used Martin SPs for years then tried some D'Addario EJ-16s. Never looked back. I know it's time to change strings when it gets harder to get them in tune. That's usually very 4-5 weeks. Sometimes 3, but I also play a lot. I stretch mine with a thumb and middle finger over the sound hole; push down with the thumb and pull up with the finger. Do this 4 or 5 times retune then repeat. That stretches them enough so that I can perform the next day and not have tuning issues.

My experience with Elixers was that when new they sounded like they had been on the guitar for several weeks. On the plus side they maintained that sound for several months.

No experience with classicals.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

Excellent post, Josh! It is indeed an important distinction to make between couch players and gigging musicians.

As a couch player, my favorites are Newtone Master Class PB 12-54 for steel, and Aquila Ambra for nylon. Nice bright, rich tone and good feel on both. The Ambra G is much better than any other classical set I've tried.

The issue of string selection is really not so much about gigging musicians - those I deal with would post very much like Josh. They buy their strings in bulk and the factors they deal with are not a building luthier's factors. They don't care what I put on their guitars because those strings are being replaced almost immediately thereafter. In that way, on the repair side of my work, there's just not much to talk about. Well, they may have their favorites, yet the strings are but a fleeting set on their guitars. With one small exception: some of my gigging electric guys swear by some of the boutique pure nickel strings for longevity. The gigging musicians that have chosen stainless frets live their own personal hell of accelerating string demise by its already accelerated gigging abuse - this seems universally communicated by my gigging clients.

Building luthiers can have the opposite of the gigging musician's circumstance: that a guitar is strung up and sits for months with little play, for example. Or ends up in a store where random people muck with it. Strings are disposable, after all, so different strokes for different circumstances. This is where consideration for coated strings comes in, some times, or pure nickel strings on electrics. It's less a matter of personal preference and more a matter of what seems to deal with the circumstance best. In the case of classicals, completely different animal as string selection is not for the faint of heart. Then again I never understood how places like Carter Vintage can hang pre-war $38,000 Martin D-18's on the way with strings that may have been last installed by Gene Autry. Seems like a $5 set of Martin strings on a $38k investment might put a best foot forward in prying out big bucks from a buyer. But I suppose not, or they would change them.

At any given time I would say I stock a couple hundred sets of strings in my shop. I do not sell retail. But repairs see lots of string replacements and, like booze, its a "rail drink". My Dewars are D'Addarios on the electrics, same for steel strings (along with bulk Martin strings), and D'Addario Pro Arte for classicals. I keep a variety of, shall we say, more boutique strings across those types of instruments, pure nickels from two manufacturers for electric, John Pearse and Martin for the steel strings, and Hannabach flavors for the classicals. Then obviously a few sets for banjo's, flat-wound for the archie crowd, silk and steel (Martin), mandolin, octave mandolin (yup, they show up), et cetera. I don't stock strings for harp mandolins, harp guitars, cigar box guitars, or ukuleles. I don't stock strings for the troubador harp that came in last week - thankfully Vermont Strings is adept at using postal mail.

The studio players and gear freaks tend to be more focused on strings, and that's 98-percent personal preference. While strings make a difference on a steel or electric guitar, it is in the classical guitars where it really stands out (and can get complicated). But I've only seen a few classical guys posting on the OLF, and the intent of Hesh's thread from his original post reads more mainstream.

Andy

I buy bulk strings on a new build coming off the bench and after it has settled in and been adjusted I use ej16s or John Pearse phosphor bronze. To my ear John Pearse wins. They last a bit longer, as well. Something you can do with the wound strings when installing is just before you tension the string pull it out of the bridge and give it one or two turns against the direction of its wind. This helps give a little more bass response.


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"It is easier to fool a man, than it is to convince him that he has been fooled"
Mark Twain

D'addario for me on electric, acoustic, and classical guitars. They're just great strings and consistent and affordable across the board, so I see no reason to stray. The only exception is Martin Silk and Steel strings for folks who need a low tension acoustic set. For coated strings I defer to the customer.

I remember meeting Fan Tao, D'Addario's head of R&D, who was extremely knowledgeable and helpful, and always happy to work with builders and musicians. I'm not sure if they're still doing this today, but Fan told me they're quite willing and able to produce custom sets for us little guys provided we buy by the gross.

Hmm.... My 16 year old daughter sings and plays guitar, (one of mine) with SS frets and my main guitar has has them and I've seen zero sign of accelerated string wear? We play out here and there and a couple hours every evening.

Just sharing the experience my folks are conveying back to me.

Andy

I'm in the D'Addario camp myself. I was never a fan of phosphor strings so I like the 80/20 bronze EXP's. Phosphor is great as they tend to last longer that's why I was thrilled when they came up with the EXP's. Never a fan of Elixir cob web strings.

I do however like to experiment on occasion. And it's not entirely true that I don't like phosphor strings. For some reason I really like DR strings.

Generally though for me it's:

Classical: D'Addario Pro Arte
Steel String: EXP's
Electric: XL's
Selmer: Argentine

I think I'll have to give those Tomastik's a try just because though.

I tried Elixir polyweb one time and my nails quickly shredded the coating into an ugly mess. I do have a set of nanowebs waiting to be tried, though...

Since I sell almost exclusively off the wall at a store I use D'Addario EXP's the majority of the time. I like EJ16's as well.

I used to use cheap bulk strings for initial string-up, settle in, and setup/intonation as I always broke a few G B and E strings during the tuning and retuning.

One day I was having a hell of a time getting the intonation right. Thought maybe I put the bridge in the wrong place. Nope, it was OK. Restrung it with D'Addarios and everything was right on.

Now I just have a bunch of singles for replacement and start with the good stuff right off the bat.

If you guys don't know it already D'Addario will give you luthier pricing. It is a nice discount and they are wonderful to work with.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

You guys might give Curt Mangan strings a try, I really like em. They're a small company out of Colorado.
I like D'Addario's too, but if both were sitting on they bench in front of me, I'd put on the Mangans.

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com