Preferred strings

Gear & Tools Talk 🎸 Guitars, Instruments & Maintenance
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Hey all,

I’m curious about everyone’s preferences for strings. Interest is purely in electric.

I have a couple of guitars on skinny top, thick bottom Ernie’s. I have another on some generic branded 11s, and another with D’adario 9s.

The Ernie’s do nicely for the punk and rock style stuff I play. Chunky sounding powerchords etc and nice playability on high.

The 9’s are nice easy vibrato but I find accurate string bends a bit harder to control. The 11s harder but more controllable and long sessions get a bit naughty on the finger tips.

Whatcha got?

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I had 9s on my strat style, then bought a used Les Paul clone with 10’s on it and liked them more for power chords.
So I changed the strings to 10s on the strat style too, together with a small setup.
Now I started with the bending exercises of Grade 4 and find full bends really hard on my fingers. Thinking about going back to 9s.

Would you recommend to stay on 10s?

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I use 10-46 gauge strings on all my solid body electrics, the brand doesn’t matter that much. Currently my preference is for Ernie Ball Slinky, simply because they are very inexpensive and readily available (and I change strings often). I don’t mind putting D’Addarios EXL 110 on my guitar, too. Of other brands I like Elixirs a lot, even though I prefer cheaper strings changed more often (for deep cleaning of the instrument, fretboard oiling, etc.).
Recently I’ve had an opportunity to play on DR TiteFit strings featuring the old-fashioned round core (as opposite to the hex core found in most currently manufactured strings), and let me tell you - they sounded awesome… I may purchase a couple of sets if I happen to find them at a music store.

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I have studied string choice on each guitar I have. In the process for two of them as I don’t like change strings just for curiosity sake, so it takes a while to get around to trying the strings I want to try.

I have noticed each guitar has a string set I prefer to use. I’ll go over a few of them below. In general, I like playing 9-42 or 9-46. I have tried down to 7 and up to 12.

PRS Tremonti SE:
This is my first guitar, so I have the most data on this. I have tried 7-10 here and settled out on 9-42 or 9-46 Ernie Ball Cobalts. I like the sound of the Cobalts better than other strings of the same size on this particular guitar.

Ibanez 761SE:
I have tried 8-10 here. I prefer 9-42 or 9-46 DR Pure Blues on this. I like them best after they get a little used. I used the same set for the duration of BLIM last year and loved the sound after about 2-3 weeks of heavy use. I didn’t change then until I was struggling to keep them in tune. These strings have a round inner core on the wound strings. I think I like the sound of that and the feel.

Epiphone SG:
This guitar is temperamental about aggressive playing. A heavily hit E power chord will momentarily swing the E string out of tune and make the chord sour. I have repeatedly returned to 10-48 and I think the GHS Thick Core and the Dunlop Heavy Core do ok here. The bends don’t seem to be as easy, but I also don’t seem to play the songs that need it as much on this one.

Strandberg NX6:
I really liked the Dunlop Rev Willy’s 8-40 set on this. The tension profile due to the multi-scale fretting made string 1 have a little more tension than string 3. I changed back to a set of 9s after getting an archtop with 12s on it and having trouble changing between the two. The 8-40 are pretty light and you need to play delicately. I had trouble with the floating bridge here and eventually blocked it. The light strings require a lighter spring tension, and it was easy to bend things out of tune. Fingerstyle is not as comfortable as with 10s it came with. With 8s, the bends kind of just happen and you need to listen to not over-do it.

Self-made Strat:
Pretty new. probably be 9-46 round cores, but still some strings to try.

Godin Kingpin Archtop:
This one came with 12-52 and I was not able to make more than a semi-tone bend. They felt a bit heavy with finger style as well. The bridge on this is set up so I need to use a wound third string to maintain intonation. This makes the string choices very limited. I am currently on my first string change and have used D’Addario XL 10-46 with wound third string. I generally consider D’Addario strings to be dull sounding, but these were not over-priced like the very few other options. I can get my tone bends on this, but I do notice I work harder at it. It feels good with fingerstyle.

I think this is a personal choice. See what works best for you. I think playing comfort is the strongest influence, next to sound. I think trying brands is as good of an idea as sizes. It is best to make a recording so you have a reference to go back to.

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For me the limiting factor is my playing not the strings so other than avoiding no-name strings I don’t really care which brand. I think my electrics are all 10-46 and my 2 Taylor acoustics get the same as what Taylor put on them

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I’m happy to see I’m not the only one who uses an Excel tracker for string changes :smiley:

About 2 years ago I started to use Rotosound strings on my guitars after having used Elixir and D’Addario sets. Rotosound costs roughly half the price of D’Addario but it’s just as good. I’ve got Rotosounds on my bass as well, but I’m planning to try a few other brands and maybe flatwounds too because the current set (Rotosound RS66) is a wee bit too bright sounding to me.

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I try to put rotosound British steels 9/42 on mine as I am sensitive to nickel. But I can’t always get them. So, I have Ernie Ball slinkys 9/42 on one guitar and I have not had a problem with the nickel (probably because I have nice protective calluses on the fingertips).

I’m about to put some 10-46’s on my strat just to try. So far I only ever tried 9-42s.

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:slight_smile: mine is fancy - It has pivot tables and tension calculations. tracks change dates with duration and lots of notes for what I exeperienced with that set of strings.

Nothing like a spreadsheet! Although mine is done in LibreOffice.

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Well I use D’Addario XL 9s on all my electrics just for ease of playing really

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Guess I’ll be the boring one here.
I’ve been using DAddario 11-52 phosphor bronze on my acoustic.
DAddario XL10-46 on my 2 electrics.

Since I like the tones I get with these and I’m fine with how they play, I’ve never felt the urge to change anything.
Though I do have a set of 9-42’s on hand. Haven’t felt the urge to put them on anything though since I’m fine with the 10s.

Boooring me!

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Like Jim, for the last 40 years I’ve only really used D’Addario EJ16 (12-53) on my acoustic and Ernie Ball regular slinky (10-46) on my electrics.

I’m in the ‘if it works, don’t fix it’ camp.

I did once put 9s on an electric and didn’t like it. Likewise I once tried 11s on the acoustic, and again quickly changed back.

They all get used the same and I change them all about once a year (Don’t tell Justin who seems to want me to change them every 4-6 weeks).

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I tried different ones and settled for EB Turbo Slinky, 9.5 - 46. They work really nice for me in terms of tone and ease of bending on high E, B, G.

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I like your approach… I should go that path, too, but I guess I’m just too lazy… :wink:

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Elixers for acoustic and ernie ball for electric and then some for classical and res The others are just extras.

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Thanks for the detailed insights, Michael!
Seems as if I probably should go a step back. How should I do a full bend in a piece, when I almost can’t do it isolated?
Solution #2: buy a guitar for every purpose :laughing: and put different strings on them :wink:.

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Yeah - it kinda sounds like that, but really I was interested in some unique thing on each one rather than a specific use. One has a really thin neck, one encourages proper posture, one is half acoustic…

I am a bit nerdy, so I enjoyed over-analyzing my string choices. I like what I get in the end though.

:smiley:

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I always liked 11-50 on my Les Paul copy, but for a full bend at the high E string, this isn’t nice!

FunkyFingers has probably stronger hands? From my experience I can imagine that 10s are probably on the edge for you or too thick. For you, the 9s may be better for bending and also, it’s more a question of getting used to. At least, on an electric, it’s fast to change strings (maybe you need to adjust the truss rod, though)

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Hey Rhys,

I settled on Ernie Ball Slinkys, 10-46 a few years back, and have been very happy with them since. I mainly play Blues.

Cheers, Shane

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Ernie Ball Super Slinky on my electric, Elixir phosphor bronze 10s on my acoustic.

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