Find Your Strings
Which String Variety?
Which is best for you, your playing style, and your guitar?
That is the big question. The answer for many beginners (and many other players) may be as simple as:
- Acoustic Guitar: Phosphor Bronze 12-53 String Sets
- Electric Guitar: NPS (8% Nickel Plated Steel) 10-46 String Sets
Those are the best selling guitar string varieties and gauges across the industry. It is a great place to start and to get a frame of reference.
Our Best Sellers
Electric 10-46 Pure Nickel
Acoustic 12-53 Phosphor Bronze
Many guitarists are happy to stay right there, others prefer to venture elsewhere. If you decide to explore further, there are many string variety choices that guitarists enjoy to help dial-in their tone and feel, based upon their personal preferences, their hands, their varied guitars, and various other things in their signal chain (signal chain is everything that is affecting the sound that eventually is interpreted by the player's and listeners' brains).
Varieties, Gauges, and Other Choices
Consider the following string varieties or aspects or categories. There are more varieties beyond what we will discuss here because were are going to address primarily where we focus. (For example: we focus on steel guitar strings because our core competency is there and not in nylon strings for classical guitars.)
Electric Guitar
What Do You Want to Hear and Feel?
Electric string wrap material and core can help to shape the way your guitar responds and how they feel in your hands. You will feel differences in warmth, clarity, attack, flexibility, and sustain.
Warm, Rounded, Vintage Character
Pure Nickel
The Sound of Legendary Recordings.
Choose Pure Nickel if: you want warmth, musical balance, and a tone that feels familiar from the first note.
Flexible Feel and Expressive Response
Nickel Round Core
For the Expressive Player.
Choose Nickel Round Core if: touch, vibrato, bending, and expressive control are central to the way you play.
Clarity, Attack, and Presence
Nickel-Plated Steel
Cut Through the Mix.
Choose Steel if: you want brightness, precision, strong pick response, and a voice that stands confidently in the mix.
Still comparing the electric options?
Acoustic Guitar
What Do You Want Your Guitar to Reveal?
Acoustic string wrap wire material and core can help drive the soundboard and influence projection, balance, warmth, touch sensitivity, and the way the natural character of the instrument reaches the room.
Balanced, Familiar Acoustic Voice
Phosphor Bronze
The Quintessential Acoustic String.
Choose Phosphor Bronze if: you want a versatile acoustic sound that feels balanced, dependable, and immediately familiar.
Responsive Feel and Musical Bloom
Phosphor Bronze Round Core
Feel Every Note.
Choose Phosphor Bronze Round Core if: you want an expressive feel, a softer response, and a string that follows the dynamics of your playing.
Warm, Organic, Vintage Character
Lost '60s Acoustic
The Sound of the Golden Era.
Choose Lost '60s Acoustic if: you want warmth, character, and an acoustic voice that feels connected to an earlier era.
Still comparing the acoustic options?
String Cores
On your typical guitar, you will have plain strings (your high e, B, and probably the G strings) and wound strings (which have wrap wire wrapped around something like those plain strings.) You will have two different cores for wrap strings, Hex and Round.
Firmer and More Immediate
Hex Core
The most common core in strings you find today is the hex core. Hexagonally-shaped core provides multiple points for the wrap wire to grab onto the core with each wrap. Hex core strings are relatively more stable and provide a firmer feel.
Flexible and Expressive
Round Core
Round core strings (take a look at your plain strings, that is essentially a round core) are not as common today and were all that was available years ago. Also, that is how piano strings are made today. Round core strings provide a "boomier" vintage tone and relatively more flexible feel.
Your hands will often tell you which construction feels right before your mind has finished analyzing the differences.
The Bottom Line
There is no universally perfect string variety, only the strings that work best for your guitar, your hands, and the way you play.
Have fun and experiment. Get out of your comfort zone and test something new. After that you may return to your standard or find a new favorite.
Still Not Sure?
Tell us what guitar you play, what string material you currently use, and what you would like to change about the feel or response.
We will be happy to help you choose a place to start.
American String
You may also reach us through our contact page.