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Old 04-05-2009, 08:18 PM
Wade Hampton Wade Hampton is offline
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Join Date: Sep 2008
Location: Chugiak, Alaska
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bryan T View Post
Strings are cheap. Try a bunch of sets over the next few months and see what you like the best.
Exactly. I prefer John Pearse strings on mine, generally Pearse 80/20 bronze on rosewood guitars and Pearse phosphor bronze on everything else. But try a bunch, see which you like.

As for the theory that the strings that come on the guitar from the factory somehow being the authoritative first choice that should be adhered to, well, you can believe that if you like. But the strings that get chosen and used in bulk at these various guitar factories are usually chosen for reasons other than optimum tone: it has more to do with price and favorable merchandising agreements than anything else.

As a rule, it's only the small shop operations like National, Goodall, Froggy Bottom and so forth that actually choose the strings they send their guitars out with for reasons of tone alone, and they can do that because they aren't churning out so many that getting a better price break on the strings would make any real difference to them.

When Elixirs came out with their coated strings, that was a real game-changer, and guitar factories started using the Elixirs NOT because they liked the tone (most senior guitar company management types I spoke with actually didn't like the tone of Elixirs much at all, especially not the original Polywebs,) but because the coating on the strings helped keep the guitars sounding better longer when handled by a succession of grubby-fingered customers.

If you ever see a hang tag on a new guitar that reads "We recommend Such and Such a brand strings for our instruments" it's not there because anyone at the guitar company actually thinks that brand sounds better on their guitars, but because they got a better bulk price from the string manufacturer if those hang tags went on.

So it's a business deal, pure and simple. That is literally all there is to it.

Since Martin manufactures strings as well as guitars, naturally Martin guitars are going to feature Martin strings. Again, it's just business. It would be fairly pathetic if they DIDN'T use their own strings, wouldn't it?

So take this for what it's worth. I'm not knocking Martin strings: I've used them and like them just fine. But the point is that you can use any brand of strings you like, and really should experiment with a wide assortment of them before you settle on those that you prefer.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller

Last edited by Wade Hampton; 04-05-2009 at 08:20 PM. Reason: spelling
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