Guitar Strings

Whether you’re a beginning guitarist or you’ve been playing for years, you need to regularly buy and change your guitar strings. But which ones to buy? The sheer number of available choices can make it extremely difficult to make a good decision. If you want to choose your guitar strings with confidence, you need to know which brands and strings are best for you – but how do you decide?

There are a number of factors that affect your choice of strings, including

• what kind of guitar you play
• what style of music you play
• whether you use standard or alternate tunings

and many others.

Moreover, guitarists often find themselves having to choose between tone and durability. Strings that are worn are hard to keep in tune, break more easily, and just flat out don’t sound good. Certain brands of string hold their tone longer, but might be more expensive. The guitarist on a budget may find himself having to choose between good-sounding strings that wear out more easily, and longer-lasting strings that don’t sound as good.

The more information you have about guitar strings and brands, the more likely you will be to make a good decision when it comes to meeting your needs. Our goal is to spend the time and money on different brands of guitar strings so we can review them for you and help you make a more informed decision when it comes to your own instruments.

Comparison between our top 5 guitar string brands

These are the five brands we feel give you the best value for your money in terms of tone, feel, and durability. We consider tone and feel to be the two most important, but a decent-sounding brand that lasts 3 months of regular play before starting to dull may score higher than a great-sounding brand that is worn out in 2 weeks.

As with all our reviews, these are the results of our own testing. These results are generalizations across string brands; the #5 brand could make a particular string model that places higher in another comparison.

5. D’addario

D’addarios are often considered a “value” string brand. They are usually well-priced and sound good new. They also had the shortest lifespan of any of our top 5 brands. The best time to buy D’addario strings for most applications is if you have a gig coming up tonight or tomorrow and realize you either need a spare set of strings “just in case” or are a few bucks short until payday and will need strings that sound decent in the short run, then can change them for something longer-lived when next Friday rolls around.

4. GHS

GHS is well-known for their “Boomer” series of strings. Their tone is decent across the range of strings, from acoustic to electric to bass, but where these strings really stand out is their durability. You can’t break these strings unless you’re trying (or you leave them on for over a year, which I’ve seen before), and even then it’s very difficult. They maintain their tone and good tune longer than any other brand tested except one. They also work very well for alternate tunings. If you’re on a budget or just don’t like to change your strings often, GHS may be the string for you.

3. Ernie Ball

Slinky strings, Ernie Ball’s most prominent series, generally sound fantastic right out of the package. They also feel great under your fingers. Our testers unanimously voted Ernie Ball brand strings the best-feeling of all the brands we tried. The tonal qualities of their electric and bass models blew away the other brands for most applications. We rate the Slinky 9-gauge electric guitar set top of the list for rock and metal lead guitar use. Their acoustic models lag behind our top 2 brands, however, and the string life tends to be short.

2. Dean Markley

Dean Markley is a fantastic string brand, and our site editor’s old standby. Their Blue Steel and Vintage lines are both excellent choices for whatever instrument you play. We heard reports of one bass player whose strings actually outlasted his instrument! Most of our testers said Dean Markley Blue Steel outlasted any other uncoated brand of strings. If you have a full weekend coming up, with gigs on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, you should consider a fresh set of Dean Markleys to get you through the weekend sounding great.

1. Elixir

Elixirs are a prime example of getting what you paid for. Yes, you will probably pay twice as much for a set of Elixirs than any other string brand, but they will probably last more than twice as long, and still sound like the day you bought them. In fact, some testers reported their Elixir strings improved with age – the opposite of most brand experiences.

Elixir does coat their strings, and some have argued that coated strings sound flatter or duller than non-coated strings, but we didn’t hear it. I have personally used the same set of Elixirs on my acoustic guitar for 6 months, with public performances no less often than every other week, without any drop in tone quality or feel. The coated string does take a bit of time to get used to, but when you do you may never buy another brand of strings.

Conclusion

This brief review should give you a nice overview of the general characteristics of string brands. In the weeks and months to come we will post more reviews and comparisons of individual brands to help you narrow down your choices.