Favourite guitar strings ?

[ourclarioncall]

Guitar strings 🙂

some questions to stimulate discussion-

1. Do you have a favourite ?

2. which brands have you tried ?

3. which brands would you like to try but haven’t yet ?

4. Have you settled on a certain guage of strings ?

5. hace you experimented with different guages ?

6. if a newbie guitar player said, I got a guitar but the strings are bust, I’m away to the guitar shop to get a pack, which ones would you recommend to him ?

[newey]

Seems to me we had a thread like this but it was many years ago, and I'm not about to go hunt it down now.

1) Yes. Although my favorites have changed many times over the years. Currently, and for the last 7 years or so, almost all of my guitars are strung with D'Addario Chrome XL Flatwounds, in either the "Extra Light" 10-48 set or the "Jazz Light" 11-50 gauge sets. I'm a bit of a contrarian in my preference for flatwounds these days, but they play smooth and stay quiet when running one's fingers up and down the enck. And D'Addario is one of the few who makes flatwound sets in 10s or 11s gauge sets, mostly they're 12s or 13s. A decade or so ago, I was playing 12s, and they had a tone like heaven itself. But some arthritis in the fingers has moved me downward on string gauges, the lighter ones now feel much better to me although one does sacrifice some tone.

2) I've tried too many to list. When I was a kid, I (and everyone else I played with) was gag over Ernie Ball Extry Slinky (or was it the Super Slinkys?) 'cause we thought that the lightest strings we could find would let us "play as fast as {insert fav guitar god's name here}" As we matured, we realized that they sounded like crap. For many years, I used regular 'ol Fender Bullets, 11 gauge mostly. I liked them enough to have stuck with them for quite a while. They were also reasonably priced, during years when cost was definitely considered first and foremost.

3) Stay-in-Tunes (aka "SIT Strings"). They're a local product (from Akron, Ohio, just down the road) and a number of people I know rave about them, but I've never tried them.

4) Gauge- See above.

5) Yes. See above.

6) See #1 above. But first I'd tell him to not listen to anything I say, because I'm the contrarian who likes flatwounds.

[thetragichero]

I've been a ghs boomers (and bass boomers) user for 20-something years. i use 11-53 low tune set for standard on my fender scale instruments
i like their nickel rockers but they come in weird gauges for me... the Eric Johnson medium set is close. they're also expensive (not as expensive as the bright flats i purchased for my guild though)
ghs bass boomers 45 65 85 105 (got a couple sets of their infinity steels for like 7 bucks per and have a bass strung up with em... never liked coated strings when i played someone's elixers a million years ago but these are nice. and red)

in my younger years i tried a lot, whatever was cheap. i still cheat and buy single plain strings in bulk from juststrings as they tend to wear out faster for me these days. not breaking nearly as many strings as i used to

[mikesr1963]

1. Do you have a favorite ?  Musician's Friend brand on my electric guitars and Elixir on my acoustic guitars.

2. which brands have you tried ? Ernie Ball, D'addario, Fender, MF, Elixir, Martin

3. which brands would you like to try but haven’t yet ? None.  Once I find something I like I tend to stick with it. 

4. Have you settled on a certain gauge of strings ?  Yes.  I use 9 and 10 gauge on my electric guitars and 10 and 12 gauge on my acoustic.

5. have you experimented with different gauges ? Not really.  I've always used 9 gauge strings on strat and tele guitars and 10 gauge on Les Paul type guitars.

6. if a newbie guitar player said, I got a guitar but the strings are bust, I’m away to the guitar shop to get a pack, which ones would you recommend to him ?  See above.