What strings (Brand) do you guys use?

Dan0h

Dan0h

Well-known member
So I’m going along enjoying my rig and realize I have never tried out other strings. My entire early guitar life I lived on TNT boomers and Then recently I put a set of Fender 11s on my Jazzmaster and Gibson vintage reissue 11s on my 335.

Outside of maybe trying a pack of slinky’s one time as a teen I’ve never ventured outside of the box with strings.

Curious what you guys use and even more curious to hear if anyone has gone down the rabbit hole and tried a ton of different strings out. I’m starting to think it can change a lot of the high end FR of the sound.

After spending almost a year chasing down a specific clean tone, I’m hesitant to switch anything up but I’m also wondering how much of the high end I may be missing from using Fender/Gibson strings when the advertising would have you believe they are the low end of string magic.
 
i don’t know how much one brand of strings really differs from any other brand in terms of tone. I went through a phase of playing GHS exclusively because the Gilmour strat set had gauges I really liked, but I can’t say I’ve ever noticed an audible difference from Fender to Ernie to GHS to Dean Markley to whatever. As you may have deduced, I buy whatever’s on sale and hope for the best 😂
 
Bricksnbeatles said:
Ernie Ball and D’addario for roundwound electric strings. D’addario and Curt Mangan for flatwound guitar strings. LaBella for Flatwound and Tapewound bass strings. Other things vary.
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Started on ernie balls and have used D'addario for the last 20+ years. I've been meaning to try Curt Mangans though, I might treat myself after Christmas.
 
What's on sale, but I haven't purchased strings in about 5 years. I purchased a ton of strings on sale when they were 10 packs for 15.00 or 20.00, 3 for 4.99, etc and still probably have about 50 packages left.

If I was to purchased strings I would go with GHS Boomers.
 
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I used to get around a lot. Ernie on everything in the 90s but I've long settled on d'addario for both acoustic and electric of varying types. I've never liked any of the coated strings from any brand. Never saw tomastks and the like to be worth the cost any time i tried them, they were nice but meh. Bass is all labella flats. I admit that I don't know what's on my upright but I doubt that's useful to you anyway.

I've been fixing to put these flat 12s on my cc tele soon. Glutton for punishment. Screenshot_20221220_133727.jpg
 
I have a longstanding Amazon subscription for D'addario XL's, 11s.

I think I started out playing EB 9's. I convinced myself that I'd be able to play faster and easier with lighter strings and moved down to 8s and at one point I think even tried 7s for a while because "Billy Gibbons uses them so it's good" or something like that. Of course my big old mitts would pull everything wildly out of tune on these (and 8s and 9s, for that matter) and eventually realized this and started sizing up.

Then somewhere along the way I became convinced that bigger strings equals moar toan so worked all the way up to 12s with a wound 3rd. Too far, big pain to play. Went back down to 11s with a plain 3rd and find that relatively comfortable. TBH I probably prefer 10.5's if I'm being really picky but 11s are easier to consistently get stocked with.

As far as what particular type honestly I don't notice a huge difference between brands/composition. I can tell the difference between coated and uncoated but I suspect for most "standard" strings of the same gauge if you blind-tested me I don't know that I could tell you which is which. D'addarios work just fine for me and end up being right around 5 a pack or less with subscription so I've not felt any reason to change. I've tried some of the "fancier" strings like NYXL, Ernie Ball Cobalt/Paradigm, Stringjoy, Snake Oil...I'm sure there's others but never really felt any of them were noticeably different and/or worth the upcharge over standard D'addario XL or even just regular Slinky's. More power to you if you find those differences appreciable and/or worth the money but more and more I'm of the mind that strings are a very very small part of the equation for me. I still sound like "me" with pretty much any string so it is what it is.
 
GHS Boomers 10-46 on all my hard tails. Been using them forever and have never broke one yet playing. Ernie Ball 9-42 or 9-46 on trems.
 
Primarily EBs and Daddarios. But I also add random brands to the mix: Dean Markley's, Bellas, Dunlops, etc.

I usually just buy what I can get for around the $5 range per set (now with recent inflation that's probably 6-7).

I used to use 10s universally on all my guitars. Now I've been using a mix of 10s, 9.5s, 9-46 and 9-42. I'm starting to like the 9s over the 10s, so eventually they'll probably all land there as I phase out my stash.
 
D'Addario flats for my Strat, currently 10-42 (12-52 set shifted up + a 10). Will probably go back to 10-48 or the 11s as they are more stable.
Fender 50-100 flats on my main P bass, 45-100 chromes on my Mini P and my Bronco. I wish I could afford Labellas but they'll have to wait,
Just got a set of 11-49 pure nickel Fender rounds for my new Jazzmaster but I haven't put them on yet.

Yes I like flats.
 
I will also add....I use D'addario Chromes on bass (flatwound) and those definitely do sound noticeably different than rounds to me. But even that is more of a feel thing for me, I just like the feel and hate the string noise I get from being undisciplined with rounds :P
 
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