Official Luthiers Forum!

If you want to obsess over the cheapest price of D'Addario I wish you well. Or, I encourage you to try John Pearse PB strings. They are about $3 more per set than D'Addario but sound a gazillion times better, IMHO. My buddy Dave, who's one of the best guitar pickers I know, recently tried a set on his guitar after years of D'Addario and Stringjoy. He's very impressed with the bigger, warmer sound as well as the longevity.

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Stay with the happy people.
--Reynolds Large

I played D’Addario PB Mediums for years but changed to John Pearse 80/20 Bronze (#200L) based on a recommendation from Bruce Sexaur. He answered some questions I had when I built a multi-scale 000 modeled after one of his and he used the Pearse strings.

I like the D’Addarios, they sound great at first but after 2or 3 weeks they would go dead and sound lousy. The Pearse strings sound great at first too but they also still sound good after 4 or 5 weeks so I actually get more value out of them too.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

We like D'Addarrio not because they are the best but for three other reasons.

1). They are the most commonly used strings in the world. I would estimate and this is going to be regional that 75% or more of the instruments that I work on come in the door with D'Addario. As you know different strings intonate in different spots with DR being the most unpredictable I know of. So when we change strings on a client guitar and it's not in to be set-up where the intonation gets reset we would throw off the intonation if we did not use what the client had it set up with. We advise clients to bring us what they like if it's not D'Addario and that has worked very well for all concerned.

2). Most of the gigging musicians in our region are our clients and we want something on their guitars that they can get locally at a store in a pinch if they get in trouble and have a gig. So D'Addario is much easier to find than Pierce.

At one time we considered putting a string vending machine on our front porch so people can get strings 24/7 and we don't have to stop working to wait on them.

3). We've been using D'Addario for 18 years now commercially with over a thousand sets installed annually. We have never, never encountered a bad D'Addario string or at least not yet anyway. It's common to encounter bad strings with other brands so much so we bought a digital microscope to take pics of the bad strings we encounter to show our clients. Uneven winds, defects etc all can be issues.

Had a set of Suarez Friday that one of the strings was too short to reach the tail block and the tuner.... poor QC for sure.

The strings I like the most that have to my ear the best tone including better bass and most importantly a soft feel that is way easier on my hands are Thomastik-Infeld. Much more expensive than Pierce so I can't justify for my home fleet but I do use them on the personal guitar that I play the most. They are my hi-fi strings and I really like them.

And that's the rub you can't satisfy everyone we all may have a different favorite. So when you are a commercial operation you have to decide what to stock and since we are not and never wanted to be a retail music store we went with one brand and it's worked out great for us.

Almost all of my clients (and all of the pros) have a string preference and they are not normally D’Addario. I bought a half gross of the D’Addario PB mediums when we did the OLF buy several years ago. I still have a few sets left, most of them I used myself. Of course I don’t have near the volume either.


Steve

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"