How to Choose the Best Electric Guitar Strings

As is so often the case with gear, many of the choices involved in finding the best electric guitar strings ultimately boil down to personal preference. String gauge is going to be the first decision, and it’s largely determined by whether you’re tuning down, your guitar’s scale length and how much tension you like.

There’s some objectivity here, in the sense that if you’re playing two steps down on a Les Paul, you’ll need thicker strings to compensate for the lost tension—but for standard tuning, there’s an operable range of thicknesses, so to speak, and where you land comes down to your touch and preferred feel.

From there, you can experiment with the various materials used for wound strings (and their tonal impact), as well as venture into coatings meant to keep strings sounding and feeling fresher longer.

In this article, we’ll take an in-depth look at important considerations for choosing electric guitar strings and recommend a variety of popular sets to help narrow your options.

From best sellers like Ernie Ball Slinky, D’Addario NYXL, and DR Pure Blues, we’ll help you find the set that’s best for your electric guitar.

How Often Should You Change Electric Guitar Strings?
Electric Guitar String Gauge Explained: Tension, Scale Length and Feel
Electric Guitar String Materials: Nickel vs. Stainless Steel vs. Cobalt
Drop Tuning and Extended-Range Guitars
Accessories for Better String Life
People Also Ask ...

How Often Should You Change Electric Guitar Strings?

Start with the rule of thumb that you should change strings every 100 hours of playing or practice time, or every three months—whichever comes first. If you’re an aggressive player with a hard attack, or if you do a lot of “dad rock” bends, you may need to change strings every 50–75 hours of playing time, or every six to eight weeks. At any point where they start sounding dead or looking tarnished—you guessed it—they’re due for a swap.

For consistent sound over time, you should set a schedule for replacing strings. If you still find strings going dead quickly, consider changing to a coated string, like the Elixir, Ernie Ball Paradigm or D’Addario XS series, which we’ll talk about in more depth a little later.

Pro Tip: If you’re breaking strings regularly despite string changes, it’s probably time to bring your axe in to Guitar Center Repairs for a checkup to make sure you don’t have rough spots, or burrs, on your bridge saddles. We encourage you to check out “Five Ways to Care for Your Electric Guitar” for more tips and tricks on how to keep your axe in pristine condition.

Ernie Ball Paradigm Electric Gutar Strings

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Electric Guitar String Gauge Explained: Tension, Scale Length and Feel

Electric guitar string gauges are usually referred to by the size of the high E string, measured in thousandths of an inch. Electric string gauges start as thin as .008 (eights), but the most common sets for standard tuning are .009 and .010 (nines and 10s). Some players with an especially heavy hand use sets as thick as .013 (13s)—Stevie Ray Vaughan famously played them. Generally, thinner strings allow easier fretting and bends, while heavier gauges increase tension and sound meatier, but are harder to manipulate.

One of the biggest factors that will go into finding the best electric guitar string for you is the intersection of gauge and guitar scale length—the distance from the bridge to the nut. Simply put, the longer the scale, the more tension it takes to get a string of the same gauge to pitch. So, a set of regular .010 gauge strings will feel tighter on a 25.5"-scale guitar, like a Strat or Tele, than they will on one with a 24.75" scale—like a Les Paul.

Tension also affects tone, with higher tensions being brighter and punchier, and lower tensions being darker and smoother. Some players like the best of both worlds, and this has led to the development of hybrid sets like the Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky or D’Addario EXL140. In these, the low strings are heavier than the standard gauge for the top string, which makes the bass notes punchier and more defined, while the top strings stay easier to bend and fret.

Your preferred playing style and genre is going to influence what string gauge will work best for you, too. Even within a single genre, the variations are numerous. For example, if you play progressive metal on the djent side of things, heavier strings are going to put a lot more beef in your low end. Whereas, if you’re into neoclassical shred, lighter strings will mean lower action, lighter touch and more speed.

Here’s a handy chart of the most common string gauges, what playing styles and genres they work well with, and some representative string sets that you might want to give a try:

Gauge	Genre/Style	Recommended String Sets
.008 to .038	Shred, Rock, Fusion	D'Addario NYXL0838 Extra Super Light Electric Guitar Strings
.009 to .042	Shred, Rock, Blues-Rock	D'Addario NYXL0942 Super Light Electric Guitar Strings
.009 to .046	Rock, Country, Blues-Rock	Ernie Ball 2222 Nickel Hybrid Slinky Electric Guitar Strings
.010 to .046	Blues, Country, Classic Rock, Jazz Fusion, Metal	10-46 Ernie Ball Regular Slinky 2221 Nickel Wound Electric Guitar Strings
.011 to .048	Blues, Jazz, Metal	Ernie Ball 2220 Power Slinky Nickel Electric Guitar Strings

If you play more than one scale length and want your guitars to feel similar, you should refrain from putting the same gauge on all your guitars. Rather, you should use a lighter string gauge on the longer-scale guitars. For example, if you’re using an Ernie Ball Regular Slinky set on your 24.75"-scale guitar, try a Super Slinky set on your 25.5"-scale axe.

D'Addario NYXL Super Light Electric Guitar Strings

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On the other hand, tension affects tone, with lower tension being warmer with less attack, and higher tension being brighter with a sharper attack. So, changing string gauge for lower or higher tension (lighter or heavier strings) can do some fine-tuning on your tonal characteristics. A short-scale guitar, like a Fender Jaguar or a Gretsch Streamliner with heavy strings on it, for example, can provide a piano-like bass with serious twang on the upper strings.

Electric Guitar String Materials: Nickel vs. Stainless Steel vs. Cobalt

Although for years it’s been popular to say that “a string is a string is a string,” there are plenty of differences in string materials. From subtle differences in the alloy steel wire used in plain strings to the size and shape of the core of wound strings and material of the wire used to wrap those cores, many factors contribute to making different manufacturers strings stand apart from each other.

Plain Strings

Pretty much all plain steel strings—the G, B and high E on most electric sets—are made from drawn carbon steel that’s usually called “music wire” or “piano wire.” It’s not really anything new. In fact, it’s been around in various forms in musical instruments for over 600 years. These days, however, the raw wire can be given various treatments, like heat (maraging) or cold (cryogenics), to alter the crystalline structure of the wire. Different manufacturers may use slightly differing alloys, but, aside from the treated ones, they’re essentially the same basic stuff.

String Wrap Options

The wound strings are where we get into the larger differences. First is the string core. This is the same basic material as the plain strings, but it can be different shapes—generally round or hexagonal, which affect how the wrap grips the core. It can also be a different gauge. Since the tension of a string is affected more by the gauge of the core, the ratio of the core gauge to the wrap gauge can make two strings of the same size feel quite different. You don’t need to know the numbers (who wants to do equations in their head when they’re looking at the string wrap anyway?), but just know that’s what can make two different brands of the same gauge feel quite different.

Ernie Ball John Mayer Silver Slinky

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Wraps vary in material and form. Wrap alloys may be nickel/steel, cobalt/steel, chrome/steel, stainless or a variety of others. The wrap material can also be round, flat or ground down from round to flat (known as “half-round”). Flatwound and half-round strings are traditionally popular choices for straight-ahead jazz players. Each wrap has its own sound and feel.

Comparing nickel vs. stainless steel string wraps, the former is going to offer a warm, balanced, almost “vintage”-style sound that’s all-around great for most genres, including rock, blues, country and beyond. On the other hand, stainless steel can be extremely bright and aggressive, which could work well for punk and metal where you want a more assertive attack and edge. Similarly, standard roundwound strings provide an all-familiar sound and tactile texture, while flatwound strings reduce finger noise and create a much more mellow, “thump”-like tone many jazz players swear by.

Here’s a chart that looks at the tonal characteristics of the various wrap types and points to some examples for you the experiment with:

Wrap Type	Characteristics	Recommended String Sets
Nickel	Warm, smooth	Ernie Ball Regular Slinky 2221 (10-46) Nickel Wound Electric Guitar Strings
Cobalt	Bright, with plenty of attack	Ernie Ball 2721 Cobalt Regular Slinky Electric Guitar Strings
Chrome/Stainless	Even brighter, sharp attack	D'Addario XL Chromes Jazz Light Electric Guitar Strings ECG24 Flatwound
Round-wound	Bright, good attack, good sustain	Ernie Ball Regular Slinky 2221 (10-46) Nickel Wound Electric Guitar Strings
Flat-wound	Very warm, less sustain	DR Strings Legend Extra Life Flatwound Electric Guitar Strings
Half-round	Between round and flat-wound in brightness and sustain	D'Addario EHR310 Half Round Regular Light Electric Guitar Strings

Coated and Treated Strings

Coated and treated strings can keep your tone and feel far more consistent from string change to string change. Over the past couple of decades, these strings have become a popular choice for many guitarists. Originating with the creation of Elixir strings, coating formulations were quickly developed by long-time industry forces like Ernie Ball and D’Addario, vastly increasing the available choices for guitarists. Using advanced polymers and plastics to apply an extremely thin coating to the string not only keeps string corrosion to a minimum, but it also keeps nasty stuff from accumulating between windings. Between the two, it helps both lengthen string life and keep that “new string” sound going much longer. While we believe you should still use the 100-hour/3-month rule, going with coated/treated strings puts more consistency at your fingertips.

Ernie Ball Tim Henson Signature Electric Guitar Strings

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Whichever strings you’ve been using, you can easily find a coated version, probably from the same company that makes your regular set. From their original coating, Elixir has expended to three variations, each with a slightly different feel—Polyweb, Nanoweb and Optiweb. Ernie Ball’s Paradigm line features their ultra-thin coating, and D’Addario’s XT family carries their proprietary coatings.

Elixir Nanoweb Electric Guitar Strings

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Drop Tuning and Extended-Range Guitars

With the popularity of lowered tuning for heavy sounds, there is increasing demand for information on the best electric guitar string sets for seriously heavy music. The growth of 7- and 8-string guitars, and the proliferation of multi-scale instruments from builders like Ibanez, Strandberg, Legator and others, make this even more critical. With a 6-string guitar, the biggest factor to consider is how far down you’re tuning. Taking it a minor third or more down with regular guitar gauges will reduce the tension enough that you’ll lose note definition and sustain while gaining string rattle. A good solution will be the Ernie Ball 2626 Nickel “Not Even Slinky” or the DR Drop Down Tuning XX-Heavy sets.

Ernie Ball Not Even Slinky Electric Guitar Strings

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For 7- and 8-string guitars, you can stay with traditional gauges on the top six strings, but the added low strings will be critical. This is especially the case with multi-scale instruments as the lower strings are also longer scale lengths, which means higher tension. For extended-range and multi-scale guitars, stick with sets specifically designed for those instruments, like the D’Addario NYXL1059 7-string or Ernie Ball 8-String Slinky sets.

Accessories for Better String Life

Proper technique for stringing your guitar and ongoing cleaning and maintenance will help keep your strings playing easier and sounding newer, longer. Every guitar you own should have a small maintenance kit tucked in the case or gig bag, so you’re never caught out short when you need to change strings, deal with breakage on a gig or any other string emergency. What do you need to keep on hand? Here’s a list.

String Winders

A string winder not only saves time when changing strings, but it makes it easier to get even winds on the tuner post, which makes for more stable tuning. For a manual string winder, we recommend the top-rated MusicNomad GRIP. If you change strings a lot or have more than a couple of guitars, you might prefer a motorized winder, like the Ernie Ball PowerPeg. If you’re in a real hurry, one of the attachment bits for a cordless drill, like the D’Addario Planet Waves Drill Bit Winder, will get the job done in a flash.

Ernie Ball PowerPeg Pro Winder

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String Cutters

Despite all the photos you may have seen of well-known guitarists with string ends waving free at the headstock, it’s always neater and safer (hey, you’ll put an eye out with that thing) to keep the strings neatly trimmed at the tuner post. If space in your case is at a premium, we’d recommend going with a combination winder/trimmer, like the D’Addario Planet Waves Pro Winder. If you’ve got the room, especially if you’re playing heavier strings, a pro-level cutter like the Dunlop DGT07 gives you better leverage for cutting that .074 gauge low E/F# on your 8-string.

D'Addario Planet Waves Pro-Winder/Cutter & XLR8 String Lubricant/Cleaner Kit

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Fretboard Conditioners

Keeping your fretboard clean and well-conditioned helps keep the grime off your strings and makes it easier to play. So, whenever you’re changing the full set of strings, we seriously recommend giving the fretboard a quick treatment while you’ve got the strings off. The MusicNomad F-One cleaner and conditioner is a popular choice for this. You also pick up a box or two of the Ernie Ball Wonder Wipe Fretboard Conditioner pre-packaged wipes and just stash a couple of the individual wipes in each case or gig bag. If you’re one of those people who also does a complete clean and polish every time you change your strings (and shouldn’t we all be one of “those people?”), it’s well worth picking up the D’Addario Planet Waves Guitar Care and Cleaning Kit to make it all nice and shiny.

MusicNomad F-One Fretboard Conditioning Oil

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String Wipes

You probably want to maximize your string life and keep that “new string” sound longer. If so, you should never put your guitar back in the case without wiping down your strings to keep them clean and protect against premature corrosion. There are a lot of choices here, from GHS Fast Fret, which has been around since the 1960s, to the individually packaged Ernie Ball Wonder Wipe String Cleaner.

Ernie Ball Wonder Wipes String Cleaner

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Pro Tip: Keep a spare microfiber cloth in your case to wipe down your strings and neck every time you put it down during a practice session, jam or gig. At the end of the day, thoroughly clean the strings with the products mentioned to get the most out of your string investment.

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